


You'd Be Here By Now

by smc_27



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, actor/director au, some celeb cameos, there is a lot of celeb name dropping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 51,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26564125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: Never in a million years would he have ever considered casting her in one of his projects. Kids who work on teen shows are usually destined for a life of barely-better-than-a-soap-opera primetime shit. Maybe she could stretch herself and get a spot on something better, but there’s no way she has the chops for this.He’ll take the meeting, move on, and her agent can let her down gently. He doesn’t have to worry about that. Maybe that makes him an asshole, but no one’ll be surprised; he never said he wasn’t one.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 49
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

He can’t go anywhere without it slapping him in the face. Paparazzi follow him no matter where he goes or what he wears now that he’s back in L.A. He was hoping it wouldn’t be this way. Not after spending five months in this tiny Connecticut town away from everyone and everything that was bringing him down. He really has no idea why he thought people would forget to care and criticize and talk about him. That never happens. Or really, it only happens when people do shit worse than he has. In this town? Jesus, you can’t walk down the street without seeing someone who’s gone through what he has.

L.A. just means he’s closer to all the shit that contributed to him ending up in rehab in the first place. He’s spent a lot of time - and a lot of therapy sessions - thinking through how this thing that used to fill him up now makes him so goddamn scared. The recognition. Notoriety. Success. Fame. Whatever you want to call it. 

Maybe, honestly, what he really is, is scared that having all that again means he can also easily slip back into this other thing. 

No. No, he’s got to name it. Addiction and depression. 

Part of him feels like all this attention is his fault. Okay, it’s obvious it is. If he hadn’t been so loud and cocky and fucking arrogant about it, he wouldn’t have gotten so off track. But when everyone’s telling you you’re untouchable, you start to think you can get away with anything. Buying from some guy who’s not - who wasn’t - his usual dealer in broad daylight wasn’t even his biggest mistake. That’s just the thing he got caught doing. And look, it started with pills to help him sleep, then ones to make him feel more awake, and then coke, and…

He avoided jail time by paying a fine and agreeing to rehab, which, at the time, felt like bullshit. Like the state should be able to tell you what to do with your life. (Like it doesn’t, anyway, in so many other ways.) He knew he was an addict. He knew he was depressed. He walked into addiction eyes wide open. It wasn’t an accident. Apparently that’s not what people wanna hear or talk about, though. He fucking loves drugs, okay? He just can’t do them because he’s an addict. 

All he wants to do is make another movie. He’s good at it. It’s the _only_ thing he’s good at. Like, award-winning good. Better than anyone else his age. Better than some people older than him. And he knows, for sure, that a lot of that has to do with the fact that he just picks good projects. He doesn’t do stinkers. He hasn’t sold out and done a fucking reboot of some action franchise. He hasn’t taken the biggest cheques someone offers him. He likes working with smart screenwriters who write characters and stories the way they are in real life. He isn’t interested in some John Green shit with teenagers who look and act like they’re 25 and storylines portraying love as this ultimate goal and perfect thing. 

When he won the Oscar, it was for a story about two young women who’d grown up as friends and learned, on his deathbed, that one’s father was actually both their father. The story was raw as hell and the cast he was able to pull did really honestly incredible work. They won a ton of awards. His sit in a box in a closet in his house because his therapist thinks having them out will trigger him to want to revisit that time in his life - that awards season in particular, when he was high all the time and had the attention of the entire world. 

He sits down at his meeting - and he doesn’t go to the one a bunch of other celebrities go to, though there is a guy here he knows has been in a bunch of movies and is married to an A lister - and considers a cup of coffee, but he’s trying to stay off caffeine. He quit that, too, cold turkey when he was in rehab just to prove to himself he could. He had a cup of tea last week and it made his hands shake. It turned his stomach; it reminded him of detox, weirdly. 

He plays with his keys in his hand and says hi when the woman next to him says hello. He feels painfully normal. It’s his own fault, though, and so he’s going to just deal with it. He doesn’t feel like sharing today. He’s been working too hard and he knows someone’ll call him on it. His sponsor, probably. 

He just wants to keep reading scripts. He’s surprised people keep sending them to him. 

Maybe he’s not completely ruined after all. 

… … …

Her last day of filming, her trailer is overflowing with flowers and gifts from costars and crew members. She’s gotten everyone else something, too. People are already crying, and they haven’t even filmed the last shot of the day, yet. It’s her and her costar Luke, who’ve played best friends for three years on this show, and who the fans have wanted to get together since about three episodes into the first season. The finale has a huge payoff for the people who’ve been watching loyally all along. The final scene, the one they’re setting up now, is them waking up in bed together, cuddling. She turns to him and says good morning, and he just smiles and kisses her. The camera will pan to the window, past their weapons where they sit, and you’ll see outside that the world is still in chaos. The idea is that the main characters, together now, will just continue living out the story and fighting the vampires. 

What they shot last night, when the lighting was good and it was dark out by the lake, was his big declaration and her admission that she’s scared, and...Look, Allie is grateful for this show and this opportunity. It’s the biggest thing she’s been in, and being a lead on a television show for three seasons is more than she ever thought was possible, back in those early days of auditioning for insurance commercials and bad plays. 

And the show isn’t bad, but the final scenes were a bit of a let down for her. Not because it’s not great that the characters are together. She likes that. She also likes that the rest of the storylines aren’t wrapped up in a pretty little bow. But the dialogue for the relationship part of it seems a bit cliche to her. To the point that she improvised a bit in a few takes and the director seemed to like it. It’s not like her character and Luke’s have never had any romantic scenes; the show has mostly been about their friendship, but there needed to be some tension and chemistry between them or the fans would’ve checked out ages ago. 

“Gonna miss you, Pressman,” Luke says to her before their third take. They’re close to the end, she knows.

“You planning on never talking to me again?” He rolls his eyes and lets out his breath. 

Everyone’s always telling her she’s only ever emotional on screen. It’s not true, but she doesn’t mind that they think it. 

… … ...

“Harry,” his mom says over the phone when she asks how he is and he replies that he’s good. She doesn’t believe him. As if a one word answer holds a bunch of subtext or something. “I wish you’d let me in.”

He rolls his eyes, plays with the glass of sparkling water he’s got sitting on the arm of his chair on his deck. She seems to think he’s deliberately doing this to hurt her. Like his addiction is his malicious way of getting back at her for something. It’s annoying, but he can’t tell her that. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m going to meetings every other day. I’m eating properly. I’m not seeing any of my old friends.”

It’s true. He’s lonely as fuck because all his friends can still drink and do coke recreationally and go to all the same parties. He doesn’t have a lot of people - any, really - that he knows who’ll meet for ‘coffee’ or lunch, and even if he did, he doesn’t have much to talk about. No one wants to hear about his stint in rehab, and how much he goes to therapy, and how fucking hard it is to be sober in this city, in this industry.

“I can take some time off. I’ll come visit.” 

He smiles, despite himself. “You don’t have to do that. I’ve been handheld for months. I need to…” To what? Sink or swim? “To figure shit out.”

“You don’t have to do that alone,” she says, and yeah, it figures she’d call him on the exact thing he’s been feeling for the whole month he’s been back. 

When they hang up, he continues watching this mindless cooking reality show because he likes watching amateurs pretend they’re experts. There’s something so arrogant about it that really resonates with him. It’s not even fake it til you make it, it’s just straight up unbacked bravado. And if he’s being really honest, he likes watching these people get knocked down a peg. Like when the 35 year old muscle-y guy loses to the grandma who makes her food without a recipe and takes twice as long. 

Shit, maybe it reminds him of him, too. Walking around like he was hot shit and then falling on his ass. 

He stays outside til after dark, pulls on a sweater when he goes to heat up some of the soup he had delivered yesterday. He can hear the coyotes and his neighbours entertaining on their back deck. It feels like a weird little community that he knows he’s in but no one else does. 

… … …

Her assistant had her apartment cleaned yesterday, so when Allie walks in it’s spotless and there are flowers on the table behind the sofa, another bunch on the kitchen island, and Allie sets down her bags and lets out her breath. She loves New York, and has always wanted to live here, and now that she has her own place, all she often wants is to be here, in her space, with her things. Living in a rented house in North Carolina for three years of shooting was fine, really, but it never felt like home. These days, the only place that feels like home is this apartment. It’s her 800 square feet of quiet space that feels like her and is decorated exactly how she wants. 

She pours herself a glass of water, smells the flowers on the counter, and then goes to sit on the sofa. She’ll unpack her bags later. 

No one knows she’s back yet, other than her parents, who live outside the city, and her assistant Becca. Her phone is somewhere in one of her bags, and she doesn’t feel like bothering with it right now. She’s considering a break from social media, to be honest. She posted a photo last night of her inside her empty house in Wilmington. The comments are mostly people leaving crying emojis and talking about the show, speculating about its ending and leaving hers and Luke’s characters’ ship name. 

She turns on the television and decides she wants to watch something that feels like the opposite of the show she’s been immersed in the past however many months. She settles on The Newsroom, kicks her feet up, and ignores her phone when it rings. 

There’s a message, later, when she checks, from her brother-in-law. He’s still in New York, too, and says he heard from her parents that she’s back, and he’d love to get together with her for dinner this week if she’s got time. She’ll schedule it later. It always takes a bit of emotional work to get up the nerve to actually do it.

She orders a burger and fries for dinner, picks the pickles off and laughs at herself for it - it’s not that she doesn’t like pickles, her sister just _loved_ them, so she always saved them for Cassandra. 

Maybe part of the reason she loves New York so much is that she feels her sister here, everywhere she goes. 

The first script she gets arrives via courier three days after her return. Sweet, sweet anonymity is over for now, she guesses. 

… … …

“I dunno,” he says to that actor guy after their next meeting. The guy - Dom - had asked Harry if he wanted to grab a coffee and talk. Harry hadn’t had a good enough reason to say no. And actually, a lot of the shit they share is really similar. They have the same drug of choice and the same attitude towards it. It’s not the worst thing in the world to get to know this guy more. “I’m bored out of my fucking skull.”

Dom laughs, swallows his sip of coffee and nods his head. “Yeah, man. It’s a complete lifestyle change.”

“How’d you do it?”

“I don’t even remember. I think I just started doing a bunch of work.”

Harry doesn’t mean to roll his eyes. “Everyone’s telling me not to do that.”

“Yeah,” Dom says, nodding. “Yeah, but what feels better? Working on something you give a shit about, or fighting the urge to do that _and_ the urge to buy some coke and go on a bender.”

They both laugh. It’s fucked up that they can laugh about a statement like that, but hey. You find humour where you find it.

“I kinda wanna write a screenplay,” Harry admits, and it’s the first time he’s ever said the words to anyone out loud. Not his agent, or his manager, or his assistant who isn’t his assistant anymore.

Dom’s brow goes up. Harry knows the guy’s written and directed, too. (Well, he knows that because after the last meeting he looked him up and found it out.) 

“What are you gonna write about?”

That’s it. That’s the best fucking thing Dom could’ve said. Because he’s not suggesting that Harry not do it, or that he _can’t_ , or isn’t capable. He gets it, Harry thinks. And it feels really fucking good to have someone in his corner, even if it’s superficial and they barely know one another. Honestly, maybe that’s better. The only things Dom knows about Harry are all the things that other people don’t like. And he’s still taking him seriously. 

… … …

She does a bit of press. Of course, she does. Luke comes to town, and Helena is with him. This time, there’s a diamond ring on her finger that Allie notices immediately and squeals over. Luke’s just laughing. Helena’s getting her PhD in...something complicated. She’s been at Georgetown and will be until she finishes. Luke’s been there since they wrapped. He likes to complain that DC feels too stuffy, but she’s seen his Insta and he’s definitely falling a little more for it. Or maybe it’s just Helena. 

It’s like, sort of gross that they’re high school sweethearts and all that, but she says that in a loving way. They’re both amazing, and Luke’s like a brother to Allie, and she and Helena get along well enough that they text and talk without him and last summer when Helena was in town for meetings with some firm, she stayed at Allie’s place for three days. 

They all sit in her living room and Luke confides that he’s in talks for a Netflix Original series featuring Kyle Chandler and Lauren Graham. Allie asks what he means by ‘in talks’ and prods him until he admits that it means he’s signed but nothing’s been announced yet. He asks her what she’s got in the pipeline and she shrugs her shoulders. 

She’s only told her manager and agent, but she doesn’t want to do another show. She wants to do movies. She wants a couple gigs over the next few years that take her to different parts of the world. She wants to do things that are more serious and for more mature audiences. She didn’t graduate from Yale so she could build a whole career doing shows about vampires and love stories. She wants something like _Garden State_ , or literally anything else that feels more real, and serious, and lifelike. 

The only thing so far that she’s even entertained was a three-week run of a play that seemed really interesting. Her agent told her, though, that the director had settled a sexual harrassment suit out of court, and Allie just refuses to work with someone like that. She’s not going to do it. Not ever. 

Her sister was murdered by a guy who thought men were entitled to womens’ bodies. Allie can’t do anything about that, but she can do everything in her control to make sure she doesn’t empower another guy to think the same way. 

“Why’re you so in your head?” Luke asks, nudging her with his elbow. They’re in the car on the way to the Today Show.

“I’m exhausted,” she replies, and it feels like the truth. It’s like she’s been going non stop for three years and now that she’s got some downtime, the tired is all hitting her at once. 

“Take a break,” he says. It’s a command, and she doesn’t like it. Her instinct, as long as she’s known, has been to push back when people try to tell her what to do. It probably comes from the independence she had but didn’t want or ask for when she was a kid. People can’t boomerang and pick and choose when they care. It doesn’t work like that.

But this is different. This is Luke. He cares all the time. Since they met four years ago. 

“I should ride the high of the show.”

He shakes his head. “People who work too hard in this line of business end up with problems worse than exhaustion.”

It sounds like a warning, and she won’t lie, it does scare her a little bit. She knows he’s at least somewhat right. It happens to a lot of people. She doesn’t think it’ll happen to her, but she doesn’t want to tempt fate, or whatever.

She books a trip to Edinburgh when their press commitments are done, because it’s the first place that she thinks of when she’s typing in destinations. It can only really be a good thing to spend a couple weeks going from castle to castle, right? 

(She doesn’t quit social media. Scotland is so beautiful and she feels so good there that she can’t stop taking photos and won’t apologize for it.)

… … …

His first draft is a piece of shit. He’s not even being hard on himself. His characters don’t sound like people, and the pacing is off. But it’s fine. He’s doing it. And everything can be edited or thrown away. 

He talks about his dad during his next meeting. People look at him like they pity him, which he’s used to. He’s been getting that look since he was 18. It’s predictable at this point and doesn’t bother him. 

“My sister’s finishing her master’s in history,” he adds at the end, maybe just so they’ll know his family isn’t all just tragedies and fuck ups. “I’m proud of her. I paid for her school, but it’s like...I dunno. She’s doing what she wants to do, and part of the reason she gets to do it is because I can help her.”

It feels good, he doesn’t say. 

People are smiling at him. 

That feels good, too.

… … ...

Her agent is starting to get pissed at her. She’s been made some good offers. There have been a few shows she’s been asked to read for, and one that was hers if she wanted it, no audition necessary. It’s the first she’s had that happen, but it was another show about teenagers set sometime in the future, and she just is not going to say yes to that. It sort of bothers her than anyone would think she would. It makes her think they don’t take her seriously. And really, she thinks, why would they? They’ve seen her in basically one thing, and she did it really well. 

She auditions for an Off-Broadway play and everyone thinks she’s insane. It’s a short run with little security, but the material is good and she likes the director. She hasn’t done stage work since college, but she finds it all comes back to her pretty easily. Her costars are great and don’t treat her like she doesn’t belong there just because she was recently on a very specific type of television show. Cody, her male lead, actually knows some of the people she went to school with. She sort of falls into this theatre crowd she never would’ve expected to like. 

“Allie, what next?” her agent asks at the start of Allie’s third week in this play. “Because this ends in less than a month, and then we’ve got to be serious again.” 

Allie wants to roll her eyes, but instead of this meeting being a call, like usual, she was asked into the office. Which she sort of realized means she’s in shit, or whatever. And she likes Elaine, obviously, but the woman should be working with her, getting her things she wants, not pushing her to do more that she doesn’t. People warned her about this, with agents. The 10% grab, or whatever it was someone called it. Agents want money, and to get it, you need to be working. She gets that. But it’s still her life, and she’s not going to sell out simply so someone else can have a payday. 

“So bring me a movie role like I’ve been asking. I’m not the one being difficult, here. I told you what I wanted, and I don’t think…”

“Look, I’ll be honest,” Elaine says, and Allie feels two inches tall. “The kinds of projects you want...People are practically laughing me out of meetings. Not that they think you can’t act, but you’re so green and entirely an unknown in that world. Almost no one from teen shows goes on to do good movies.”

Allie grits her teeth. “I want what I want. I’ll work for it.”

“Work _where_?”

“Stage. Small roles. I don’t care. I don’t need to be the lead in something right away.” Elaine takes a breath, shakes her head. “I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s impossible and I’m shooting for the moon. If I’m that bad, then fire me.”

As soon as she’s said it, she’s overcome with panic. _Fuck_. Cassandra always told her that one day her temper was going to get her into trouble. 

Elaine, though, doesn’t seem to mind it. In fact, the corner of her mouth ticks up and she says, “I’ll do my best.”

“I hope you mean that.”

She gets up and they say goodbye, and she’s recognized by a group of kids on a field trip, or something, on her short walk home. She takes some pictures and signs some autographs, and Elaine texts her before she’s even got her key in the lock at her apartment. She says something about this being good for her image, and reminding people she’s still around. Allie hates playing the game, but if this is what it takes, she can manage it every couple weeks or so.

It’s summer in the city, and when the play wraps Sam and Becca come, and so do her parents and another friend she’s had since high school and is working as an architect at a firm in Boston. They all go out afterwards, though her parents stay only for an hour and then leave ‘the kids’ to it. Allie’s eating pasta and bread and drinking wine with some of her favourite people in the world. Becca booked them a tasting room in the back of this restaurant - and Allie’s manager is paying, which is super generous of him - so they don’t have to worry about anyone interrupting their meal. 

“I’m sorry,” their server says, leaning down to speak in her ear. “There’s someone outside who’d like to see you. I let her know this is a private function, but she asked me to check with you.” She’s confused. “Carla Reynolds?”

Allie stiffens. Carla Reynolds is one of the most influential casting directors in the business. They met once about 5 years ago; Allie had been fresh out of Yale and Elaine was newly her agent. There was a party and she went as Elaine’s plus one. She doubts Carla remembers that, though. Why would she? 

She says that Carla can come in, of course, before really remembering she’s been drinking and hoping she doesn’t make a fool of herself. Her hands are shaking. Her friends are chatting around her, not paying any attention, really. It’s better this way.

“I saw your name on the list,” Carla says as they embrace, and kiss cheeks. It always seems fake, but it’s what everyone does. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“You’re not,” Allie says, genuinely. “It’s good to see you again. We met at...I can’t remember. I was with Elaine D’Silva.”

“Of course, of course,” Carla says, and Allie smiles and looks down a bit. Clearly, Carla doesn’t remember, but she doesn’t want to be rude. It’s fine. “I saw the play last week. You were incredible in it.”

Allie might cry. “Thank you so much.”

“Everyone kept telling me to go. I’m so glad I did.” Allie just smiles. She doesn’t know what to say. “Have you considered film?”

Allie doesn’t mean to laugh, but like… “That’s all I want.”

Carla gets this sort of wicked grin on her face. “Noted,” she says, then winks. She glances to the table of Allie’s friends and then back to Allie. “I won’t keep you. You’re still with Elaine?”

“I am. We’re really looking for some interesting film projects,” she says, because this is serious, and she wants to make herself very clear. 

“I’ll be in touch,” Carla says, and then she walks out of the room and Allie’s heart’s beating fast.

… … …

Dom ends up knocking on his door when he doesn’t show up for AA two weeks in a row. 

He doesn’t want to leave his house, okay? No one will take even a call with him, let alone a meeting. The paparazzi are posted outside his house every day now that word’s out that he’s back. It makes him anxious as fuck. His mom’s on his case about wanting to visit, and he just wants to be left the fuck alone. He spends two days in bed, eating stale cereal he finds in the cupboard, and thinking about how this kind of shit was so much easier to deal with when he was using. It’s so fucking tempting to just numb the pain. A lot of things stop him from doing just that. Not the least of which being that he won’t be able to go anywhere without the cameras following him and recording his every move. That’s the only reason he has to be thankful for them. 

He’s at least showered and gotten dressed today, so when he opens the door and Dom is standing there, Harry doesn’t look like he’s been sulking in a depression den. 

Dom says, “Hey, buddy,” and somehow makes it sound not patronizing. “You busy?” Harry doesn’t say anything. “Let’s grab lunch.”

“I’m not hungry.” 

Dom rolls his eyes. “Then you can watch me eat.”

Dom drives a literal fucking minivan, which may explain why the paparazzi don’t follow them. Well, that and the fact that Harry hides in the car a bit until they’re down the street, and Dom lives his life so open and honest, there’s really not a lot of reason for anyone to try to sell pictures of him. 

He orders a salad and a glass of sparkling water at this restaurant Dom chooses that Harry’s never heard of. It’s sort of shitty. The food’s average and there’s literally nothing about the place that would make him want to come in, but whatever. It’s empty and they’re not being bothered. He can’t really ask for much more. That’s probably why Dom chose it. 

“Are you at least closing yourself off because you’re busy writing?” Harry scoffs, shakes his head, and chases some arugula around on his plate. He doesn’t know how to respond to that. “Harry.”

“I…” He looks up and Dom’s just got this knowing look on his face, which is really the only reason it feels even remotely right to tell the truth. “I finished something.”

“That’s great!” 

“Yeah, it’s…” What he doesn’t know how to say is that he thinks it’s really fucking good. It’s terrifying that he feels like this could really be something. Because what if it’s not? What if he thinks it’s good but everyone else thinks it’s trash? He doesn’t know what he’d do. “I can send it to you, if you wanna read it.”

Dom looks surprised. Maybe a bit touched. “Are you sure?”

Harry shrugs. “Yeah.”

Later that night, he gets a text from Dom saying he’s made some calls on Harry’s behalf and there are a couple things in the works. 

He calls, then, tells Harry, “It’s really fucking good, man.” 

Harry doesn’t sigh his relief until he hangs up the phone, but still. 

… … … 

They ask her to send in a video, which she panics about, wondering if her phone will produce good enough quality video. She doesn’t even really know what the project is. The title, writer and director have all been kept completely secret. Elaine told her they sometimes do this when it’s a really big project with big names attached. Allie doesn’t know much about that, but she doesn’t care, really. She knows she should.

The material is beautiful. 

She’s auditioning for the lead role, which is this woman who left a small town as soon as she could, and had always been excellent at everything she’d tried as a big fish in a small pond. In the world, she’s not so special. At all. She’s shockingly average. Her mom dies and she’s come home to deal with all that, and what she finds is that she’s average here now, too. 

The scene she’s recording, she’s being confronted by her alcoholic aunt who’s basically blaming her for her mother’s death. 

She picks the best run through and tells Elaine to send it. Of all the things she’s read recently, this is by far her favourite. She really doesn’t even know why, other than the writing is so gorgeous and this character feels so real. She’s from a small town, too, but that’s where the similarities stop. Well, she supposes she can tap into all the pain of her sister dying. She’s been able to do that for a while. You’d think it’d get old or less effective, but nope. Still raw. Probably always will be. The masochist in her wants it to always feel so awful. It reminds her Cassandra was alive and amazing and had the world at her fingers. She doesn’t want to even start to forget. Sometimes it gets a little difficult to sit in that all the time, but that’s what therapy is for. She’s fine. She can handle it. 

She gets the call that they want her in L.A. to meet with the writer/director, and she squeals and spins around in her living room, then pulls her suitcase out of her closet and calls Becca to get in touch with Elaine’s assistant and help arrange the travel.

… … …

He’s got three meetings with potential leads today. The casting director, who he’s worked with before, is someone he trusts, for the most part. He sort of wanted to stay out of the early rounds of this process, because he knows himself and he’d obsess and obsess and never find anyone to call back in. It’s happened before; it’s better for everyone if they do it this way. He thinks he’d be even worse on this project because it’s something he wrote. 

“Allie Pressman?” he laughs out at Carla, who’s sitting across from him in this rented office they booked for this purpose. She looks serious, doesn’t bat a lash at his indignance. Or that he’s making fun of this. Or whatever he’s doing. “The girl from that vampire show?” Carla tilts her head, as if to ask what’s wrong with that. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“She’s good,” is all Carla says, and he doesn’t buy it. She should be trying to sell him. Allie’s their first meeting of the day, and he’s damn sure gonna rush through it to get to the others unless Carla can give him a good reason not to. “She’s well-trained. Have you even seen her in that show?”

He doesn’t want to admit that he watched the first season because his little sister loved it and he wanted to know what the hype was about. And yeah, he could’ve stopped after an episode, but he didn’t. The show wasn’t _good_. It was written in such a way that you wanted to keep watching to know what happened, but everything about it was lame. Her costar was your typical all-American douchebag looking guy, and Allie herself...He could tell it took her a few episodes to get comfortable. And sure, once she got there she did okay with the shit dialogue she was given, but there was still something really stiff and unbelievable about her performance. 

Never in a million years would he have ever considered casting her in one of his projects. Kids who work on teen shows are usually destined for a life of barely-better-than-a-soap-opera primetime shit. Maybe she could stretch herself and get a spot on something better, but there’s no way she has the chops for this. 

Carla then gets this look on her face and asks, “Have you ever seen her in anything else?”

He knows he’s not gonna win this one, and honestly, he doesn’t have it in him to fight over an hour of time spent with this girl. He’ll take the meeting, move on, and her agent can let her down gently. He doesn’t have to worry about that. Maybe that makes him an asshole, but no one’ll be surprised; he never said he wasn’t one.

When she walks in, she’s wearing black pants, a white tee shirt and a green blazer, and he’s not gonna lie, she looks good. She’s actually a lot prettier than he remembers or was expecting. Granted, it’s been a few years since he paid a single ounce of attention to her, so it makes sense that she’d look different than he remembered. Her hair’s a bit unruly, but then he likes that about her, too. She greets Carla, and when they’ve finished saying hi, he stands and gives what feels like a really awkward smile. 

Look, he knows this is weird. It’s just him and the casting director here. None of the producers are in the room. He just needs to feel good about the people he’s casting. Once he knows who he wants to bring back, they can do the formal, normal audition thing. He hasn’t even seen anyone’s tapes. This is the way he likes to do it. It’s been this way since he could ask for what he wanted and be told ‘yes’. 

“Allie Pressman. Nice to meet you.” She holds out her hand and she has a pretty good hand shake. And since he knows they never told her - or any of the actors - who the writer or director were, she does a pretty good job of not being thrown off by it. Maybe she’s just that comfortable with herself. 

He asks, “Why do you want the job?” before she’s even sat down in her chair, and she stills a moment, looks at him, and then smiles a little. It’s not fake. 

“I love the script,” she answers. Harry knows it’s good, okay? He still likes to hear it. “And I wanna be in movies.” Harry blinks at her. He doesn’t know what to make of her going personal instead of more detail on why she likes the material. He thinks he’s into it, though. It’s something he’d do. “I’ve been waiting for projects that make me feel like I feel when I watch my favourite movies, and this one did. I want to be in it.” 

He finds himself smirking. Shit. He likes that answer and how direct it is. He still doesn’t think there’s a chance in hell she’s a good enough actor for the role, but he no longer thinks she’s just like, a teen show has-been.

He’s really not expecting her to blow it out of the water. They watch her tape with her sitting right there, not looking at the screen because like most actors, she doesn’t seem to want to watch herself. He glances at Carla, who looks a little too smug, like she knows she’s done well bringing Allie in. He’s fucking shocked. Seriously. Maybe he shouldn’t have judged her so quickly. 

He asks her a couple questions about the choices she made, asks if one of her movements was a deliberate choice, this nervous little thing she did with her ear, or if it was just her forgetting she was on camera. She says it was a choice, explains her reasoning. Then she stands up so she can read the lines for another scene, as Carla reads the other character and Harry watches. She’s got a good face. She can do a lot with it. At one point, he sees literal tears in her eyes. It’s not that special - most actors can do that - but he legitimately didn’t know she had the range. 

By the time she leaves, he feels pretty good about her. The other actors coming in are more seasoned, and he thinks he’s still going to go with one of them, but he’s impressed. Allie’s got potential. When she lands something, he’ll be happy for her. 

He doesn’t feel badly that he still doesn't want her for this.

Over the next few weeks he lets people convince him that she’s right for it. It makes him nervous as fuck, instead of feeling secure in the choice. She’s still too new. She still hasn’t proven herself. 

Harry hopes he hasn’t been talked into making a mistake. 

… … ...

When Elaine calls to tell her she’s gotten the role, she’s literally so surprised she can’t even speak. 

Look, she’s been to enough auditions to know when they’re going well and when they’re not. And when the people on the other side of the table are giving you that little back, it usually doesn’t mean anything good. And she wasn’t even that shocked or bothered, honestly. It was a dream to get to read that script and go up for it. She honestly knew that she’d just ride the wave of the process as long as she was allowed to. It was a long shot to begin with, and then the way Harry Bingham - literal Oscar-winning director Harry Bingham - was looking at her as she read was just… He didn’t hate her. She thinks he actually liked her. But a couple of the questions he asked about her choices after she read for it made him purse his lips in a way she didn’t really like. And he just thanked her for coming and wished her luck, which didn’t exactly scream excitement, you know? 

And she was fine with it. It was a good experience, and she took a couple other meetings while she was in L.A., and caught up with her friend Bean, who works as a costume designer out here. Allie had come to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t get the part, and that was okay. 

So hearing that she’s got it, and then Elaine telling her about the backend deal they offered and saying they should ask for more because there’s definitely room to negotiate is just…

She manages not to cry until after she hangs up. They don’t even start filming for months. But apparently there are meetings and a bunch of prep work she’ll have to go to L.A. for even though the movie shoots in Toronto. 

Her manager and Becca work together to schedule the meetings during a trip out west for this three episode arc she’s gotten on on this super popular primetime show about this all women-run law firm. She’s playing an intern who’s enduring sexual harassment by one of her professors, and it’s all really heavy and kind of hard to shoot, but that’s the point. 

She's got a two day break in her schedule before the next episode kicks off, and all her scenes are wrapped by mid-day, as planned. She cleans her face and changes into her own clothes, just leggings and a crop top because she’s just meeting with the lead makeup artist and costume designer for the movie and they want to test colours and all that shit. If she’s got to change in and out of clothes a hundred times, there’s no point in getting dressed up now, or putting makeup back on her face. 

When she walks in with Becca, they’re sipping iced coffee because it’s hot as fuck outside, and Allie’s hair is pulled up in a ponytail, and she’s laughing at this comment Becca made about one of the PAs on the show. 

She doesn’t expect Harry to be there, lounging on a sofa with a laptop open and a pair of sunglasses pushed up onto his head. Becca literally laughs out, “Holy shit,” like yeah, she’s definitely seeing how good he looks, too. Allie pulls her shoulders back a bit for some reason. Maybe to make herself look less casual. 

“Hey,” she says, and he gives a tight lipped smile and moves his laptop to sit beside him, stands, and reaches over to shake her hand again. It feels weird, since they’ve already met, but she also sort of likes how respectful it is. “This is my assistant, Becca.”

“Nice to meet you,” he says, sounding sort of kind about it, as he shakes Becca’s hand, too.

“Do you come to all these routine meetings, or?” she asks, and Harry gives her an actual smile, sits back down and reaches for his laptop again. 

“I like to know what things are gonna look like.” And like, that makes sense because he’s the director. But she can’t say she's ever had someone in his position show up to this boring stuff. “Before we decide on sets and locations and hire a cinematographer.”

“Huh.” He raises a brow. Becca’s typing something out on her phone, then lets out a little noise of frustration and excuses herself to take a call. “I just...Maybe I’m new to all this.”

He lets out a laugh that sounds sort of offensive, honestly. Then he like, smirks. “You definitely are.” She knows she reacts too swiftly, shows it on her face that she doesn’t necessarily appreciate that. “Oh, come on.” He literally scoffs, gives her a look that she hates is visually attractive even when he’s kind of being a dick. “You’ve never done anything like this before. I definitely wanted someone with more experience.”

She absolutely cannot get fired from this project before it even starts, and smarting off to the director would be the best way to end up out of a job. Like, it’s been announced that she’s attached, but people leave projects all the time and she knows she’s definitely not the one with the power, here. 

“Then I guess I’m pretty lucky that this is my starting point,” she says, hoping it’s flattering, or something, even though she fucking hates playing this game.

He doesn’t even look up from his computer when he says, “You are,” like he knows something she doesn’t. 

She just thinks he’s being an asshole. That maybe he is an asshole. That’s what’s reported, right? Like, she knows about his past. She knows this is the first thing he’s done since rehab for a drug problem that she can’t honestly say she understands the severity of. The press had a field day with it, which...of course they did. From what she heard, it was pretty bad. But also she generally doesn’t believe shit she reads online, and it’s pretty clear that he’s at least a bit better now, is in recovery, or something, and is back to creating beautiful things that mean something. 

The costume designer comes to greet her, and Allie notices he’s looking at her as he walks away. Becca follows her, says something about a small change to her schedule for tomorrow, which Allie is dreading. Her schedule tomorrow was to do absolutely nothing. Ugh. 

Then Becca says, “You better get used to it,” in this sort of soft voice, reminding Allie about how much things are about to change for her. 

Allie tries to ignore Harry Bingham’s reminder that all this is _new_ , and listen to Becca’s instead. Becca’s framing is better. 

This is what she’s wanted. This is her whole life’s dream at her fingertips. And it’s all in her control, and she’s not going to let anyone ruin it. 

… … …

By the time they get to Toronto, he’s got hundreds of files on his laptop, details on everything from lighting sequences, to wardrobe, to blocking, to the schedules of every single person on set. Which he definitely doesn’t have to do, but always does. And his therapist tells him he needs to trust people to be able to do their jobs, and he _does_ , he just doesn’t necessarily trust himself to do his job if he doesn’t have all the pieces somewhere in his hands to access quickly. It helps settle him to know he has control of everything. 

The studio rents him a house in this quiet neighbourhood that reminds him a little of the one he grew up in, if the one he’d grown up in had been in a bigger city and not a smaller town. Which is to say that the houses are just as big but just closer together. He knows the cast is all staying at a hotel; he knows Allie got in last night, and Gareth should be in by tomorrow if he’s not already; he had last minute reshoots to tie up and was contractually obligated to get them done before starting this. Harry wants to tell the guy he needs better contracts. 

He sees on Allie’s Instagram - not that he follows her, but he checks to see if she’s posted anything interesting because he’s bored as he waits for his food to arrive - that she’s taken a picture of the tower, or whatever, from street level. She captioned it _I love this city 🇨🇦_ and Harry wonders what she’s doing right now. Which is a stupid thought, because it doesn’t matter as long as she shows up to set in three days with her lines memorized and ready to get her scenes in the can. 

He has a panic attack around 10:30, totally unprompted, which pisses him off. He needs to get his shit together.

He does something truly, monumentally stupid, and calls her. He doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s doing it for or why the thought crossed his mind. He’s just had this thought all along like what if she’s not the right person, even though he knows she can do it and she looks the part and they’ve built the rest of the cast around her. He just...This is a big fucking deal, and he thinks, weirdly, the only other person who might be able to understand that is her. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Harry. Harry Bingham.” He closes his eyes, holds the phone away from his face as he paces in the living room of this house, in front of the fireplace. He can’t sound stupid in front of the people he’s got to direct. He can’t. 

“Oh.” She’s surprised. Makes two of them. “Hi. Is...Are you okay?”

Honestly, something about the fact that _that’s_ the question she’s asking makes his stomach twist up in knots. Not that he’s worried she can tell he’s a wreck, or something, just...He thinks she’s genuinely asking. Like she’s a good person who wants to make sure he’s all right before the conversation continues. 

“Yeah,” he says, a little breathless. He’s not okay. She’ll be able to tell. “Yeah. Just...Checking in. You’re all settled?”

There’s a pause, like she knows this isn’t typical - because it fucking isn’t - and doesn’t understand what’s happening. Which makes sense, too. 

“I am,” she says, her voice calm, steady. It’s like she can tell he needs that, or something. “My room is great. Becca’s next door.” He hums, and then she continues. “I have everything I need.”

It’s stupid that it puts him at ease, but he feels a weight lift off his shoulders, and scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. 

“I’ve got this big house,” he says, and then laughs, because that’s a stupid thing to say. “In Rosedale? It’s way too much for one person.”

She laughs gently, and he thinks she’s sort of teasing him when she says, “Perfect for you to put up all your bulletin boards and spread all your files out on some big table.”

It startles a laugh out of him. How does she know his process? He feels more calm, sits down on the sofa.

“Did you google me?” he asks, grinning, and likes that she laughs at that, too. Literally the only time he’s talked about this was to GQ when they did that cover piece after the Oscar.

“Are you really going to pretend you didn’t google me, too?”

Okay, no. No, he’s not. 

“Did you know we’re both from Connecticut?” he asks, and Allie’s breathing into his ear. 

“Mhm.” She’s got a good voice. He doesn’t know why he called her - he still hasn’t figured it out - but he does know he likes that she’s just going with it. “I think our moms have met, actually.”

“Seriously?” he asks. “Fuck.” There’s this silence that feels a little awful, but he also doesn’t want her to hang up. He doesn’t want to be alone again just yet. “Are you nervous?”

“I’m…” She takes this deep breath. He thinks he can hear sheets moving, or something. It’s early for someone to be in bed, but whatever. “I’m anxious, but not nervous, if that makes sense.” 

“Yeah.”

“I just really want to do justice to the material,” she says all softly, and he doesn’t know what to say to that. “It’s really, really good, Harry.”

“Thanks, Allie.” Shit. Shit, he said that too gently. “Anyway, I’ll let you go. Sorry. This was…” He doesn’t know what it was. “It’s weird that I called so late.”

She lets out this soft laugh, and says, “No. No, it’s okay. It actually...We’ve never really spoken, seems like. I was starting to think you didn’t like me.”

Honestly, he’s not sure he did. He’s not sure he does. He can’t actually say for certain this spontaneous phone call changes anything. 

“We don’t really know each other,” he reminds her, because it feels sort of important. He’s not making judgements except what he thinks her acting abilities are. 

“Maybe that’ll change,” she says all quietly, and then laughs, a little like she thinks she shouldn’t have said that out loud. 

But honestly, he’s sure it will. Sets are pretty fucking intimate places. Why do you think actors always end up falling for each other? 

“It will.” Maybe at some point, too, he’ll stop thinking of her as completely green. Like, maybe this is her first major motion picture, but it’s not like she’s never had a camera pointed at her before. “Anyway, goodnight, Allie.”

“Goodnight,” she echoes, and then she hangs up first, which he also feels weird about. Because who is he if he’s not overthinking absolutely everything?

He follows her on Instagram. She follows him back, despite the fact he hasn’t posted since before rehab. She likes one of his old photos. It’s this thing from his last set, a lens flare through the trees with Kelly Aldrich, the film’s lead, at the bottom of the frame looking sort of perfect. It’s a weird reminder that he fucked that up, too. Not that Allie’d know that. No one knows it. 

He takes a xanax before bed and tries to get as much sleep as possible. He’s always anxious before shooting starts, but he’s never been _this_ anxious. He just knows what people will say about him if this isn’t successful. Not even just because it’s his first writing credit. No, that’s not the big deal. This is the first thing he’s done since sobriety and falling off the radar, and if it’s a mess, everyone’s going to look at him like he’s a fucking half a second away from falling off the wagon. They’re going to talk about him like he can only create good shit if he’s using. 

Hell, that’s his biggest fear about himself, too. But Dom’s been trying to remind him that it’s obviously not true if he could write such a beautiful script stone cold sober. 

He takes deep breaths in and out until he’s finally feeling like his nerves are less frayed. He’ll call Dom tomorrow for some moral support. Yeah. Yeah, he’ll remember to do that.


	2. Chapter 2

Allie’s wardrobe for the first scene they’re shooting is something she’d never in a million years wear. It’s this fucking hideous brown chenille sweater that doesn’t even fit. And like, sure, she’s supposed to be grieving in the scene, and her character has dug into a closet that isn’t hers for something to wear, but god. They could’ve picked literally anything that isn’t this shapeless, ugly thing with jeans that are actually falling off her hips. 

They’re shooting on this bridge just outside the city with red steel trusses going over it, or whatever. There’s a stream running below it, and her character has parked her car right in the middle of the bridge. Allie thinks the whole thing is a metaphor for how her character - Eliza, or Eli, for short, as pops up later in the script - can’t actually leave this town. Rather, she’s got a moral obligation to stay, despite the fact that she really, really wants to leave. 

She just thinks this woman who’s driving this silver BMW convertible probably wouldn’t wear such an ugly fucking sweater. 

“Cut,” Harry says after three takes, and she tries not to panic. She doesn’t even have lines. It’s day one. She hopes this isn’t about her. She hopes it isn’t because she… “What is this wardrobe?”

Allie ducks her head to hide the look on her face, though the makeup artist that’s patting powder onto her upper lip tuts at her for it. 

Someone’s talking, telling him something or another about the sweater, and he catches Allie’s eye. 

“It makes her look like a brown blob in the middle of all these trees. Let’s try something different.”

Allie says, “At least he must think I look marginally better than a brown blob the rest of the time,” and the makeup artist giggles a little. Harry looks over, looks her up and down, and sighs. She doesn’t know if he heard her or not.

She’s ushered off to the wardrobe trailer, and the costume designer and dresser are sifting through the racks they brought with them. Allie spots this white and blue sweater that has no real shape to it, looks big and baggy, too, but at least has some colour to it and may give off the same ‘I don’t have it in me to do more than this’ vibe, but isn’t like, hideous. 

She pulls it on, and they touch up her hair and makeup, and then when she steps out of the trailer Harry’s there with his headset on and his phone in his hand. He looks up, gives her a once over, and then there’s this little grin on his lips like this was what he was hoping for. Feeling the buzz of excitement from the first day of filming, and from his approval, she does a little spin as he looks at her, and heads back towards the bridge. 

Harry laughs softly, then takes a deep breath and follows her. 

After they finish coverage - it takes another hour only, and then they move onto the driving scenes - Harry says, to no one in particular, “No more brown. We’re never putting a woman that beautiful in brown again.”

Allie’s cheeks colour, so she ducks her head to hide it, her hair falling around her face. 

What the fuck is happening? 

First he’s calling her late at night and sounding legitimately a little panicked or nervous, and now he’s saying this thing in front of like, half the crew. And Becca, who’s literally cheesing about it and who also knows about the call because Allie tells Becca everything. 

No, she refuses to overthink this. He simply feels the same way about that brown sweater that she did, which is that it was a bad choice. He’s just got the power to do something about it. And like, she’s an actor. She knows she’s not ugly. He’s far from the first person to call her beautiful. There’s really nothing at all remarkable about it. 

He barely pays her any mind for the rest of the day, except to specifically do their jobs. Like, he’s the director, so of course they interact. But it’s all business. And she appreciates that. Even when he comes over to talk to her between takes about what he needs her to do when the car is moving along the road and the camera’s on the crane panning around her, and he tugs her shirt down off her shoulder like that’s just how he wants it in the shot. It’s just work. His brow is perpetually furrowed in concentration. 

It’s definitely cute. She tells herself it isn’t, then tells herself there’s nothing wrong with thinking someone is cute when they’re cute. Even if they are your boss and mostly give you the cold shoulder. That has nothing to do with the fact that he’s got a good face. She can separate the two.

… … …

Grizz is an amazing actor. Harry’s actually...it doesn’t make him _mad_ , but there’s something about seeing people who’re clearly the best at what they do that just makes you feel angry, you know? Not in a malicious way, or whatever. It’s just so impressive it sparks this feeling of ‘what the fuck am _I_ doing’? Grizz is also just so calm all the time, and so natural in front of the camera. He’s who Harry wanted for the part - fuck, he’s who Harry had in mind when he wrote it - and he wants to thank whoever he needs to thank that Grizz was both available for this and interested in doing it. And, hell, that his screen tests with Allie went the way Harry was hoping they would.

They’re not playing love interests. There’s no romantic arc to this script. Which Harry knows is a huge risk, okay? He knows it. To have a young woman who looks like Allie Pressman does in a massive drama with no love interest is...They’re going to say it’s a waste, or that the film is missing something. But he doesn’t think it is, and it’s only been brought up once in one meeting with a producer. The producer was Brad Pitt, and he just asked what the rationale was. Harry just wants to focus on her, and her grief, and her friendships and fucked up relationship with her family members. It’s so much more interesting than some dude coming in and making it seem like she couldn’t have done this without him. That’s...honestly, that feels like bullshit.

A friendship between Grizz, who plays Lucas, a guy who went to high school with Eliza and never left the town, is way more interesting than her moving to a small town and falling in love. This isn’t a fucking Hallmark movie. 

Grizz’s character’s wardrobe is sort of hilariously like Grizz’s regular style. It’s all flannels and thermal shirts and jeans. Blundstones and at one point a little neckwarmer Harry thought would look stupid but doesn’t. 

Harry’s currently sitting on the back of a truck with his laptop open as the crew sets up lighting equipment and all that shit. They’re filming on this farm for a while - the exterior shots that’re meant to be of Grizz’s home. They’re way out of sequence, filming a bit where Eliza’s coming to Lucas to get away from her aunt, ends up leaning on this wooden fence as Lucas tends to his chickens. Harry can’t say he likes working with farm animals - or the smells that come along with them - but it’s sort of vital to the scene and building the character.

Allie steps out of wardrobe in this outfit she’s in for this scene. She looks...she looks fucking good. She’s just got a black tee shirt french tucked into some skinny jeans, but still. He doesn’t _stare_. He...he stops himself from staring at her most of the time. Saying that thing he did last week about her being beautiful was just a fact and he refuses to feel weird about it, okay? Everyone with eyes can tell. 

Her hair’s been done and her makeup is set. Becca hands her a cup of tea and Harry hears, even from over here, her let out a little sound of appreciation and looks over just in time to see her sip it through the straw. She’s wearing those stupid Uggs she always puts on despite the fact it’s not that cold out at all, and then Becca gives her her phone. He watches her turn her face towards the sun, hold her phone up to try to get a photo. 

Okay, maybe he’s staring. Becca’s laughing at her as she tries to get a picture, and then Becca’s own phone rings so she answers and walks off. Harry sighs, smiles to himself, and sets his computer down. He walks over, holds out his hand, and Allie gives him this blinding smile he doesn’t want to think about. 

“I’ll do it,” he says, and she sets her phone in his hand. It’s got this pink case on it that’s meant to look like marble, or something. “What’re you going for?”

She laughs, sips her tea and watches him. “You’re not going to take charge of this little impromptu photo shoot, too?” she asks, and it makes him laugh. “Honestly, I’m living for this highlighter, so as long as it shows, I’m good.”

Harry shouldn’t do this, but he walks closer, searches her eyes for permission or something as he raises his hand up to her face. She nods. Gently, he sets his thumb on her jaw, his index finger sliding along the other side, and tilts her head just so, a little upward but not too much so. She blinks a few times, and he steps back a bit, arches his back as he lifts her phone and swipes the camera open. 

“Portrait mode?” she asks, and he thinks she’s joking. 

He laughs out, “Fuck off,” because he’s a fucking award-winning director. He doesn’t need portrait mode to make her look good. 

And he doesn’t need to take more than one picture to capture what he thinks she wants. 

He hands her phone back, and she looks at the picture, slides her eyes up to his and raises a brow. 

“Show off,” she says, grinning, and it makes him laugh again. 

“You’re welcome.”

She opens Instagram and asks, “Can I tag you?”

He shrugs his shoulder, slips his hand into his pocket. “Yeah. Everyone knows we’re filming. It’s all good.”

When he checks later, she’s posted the photo and in the caption she’s just used the star emoji, and then _Photo by @HarryBingham_ and then added the handles of the stylists, hair and makeup crew, too. It makes him smile. There’s something sweet about her giving credit to the crew for their work. 

His publicist messages him that it’s good to see some activity on social; says something about how Harry could take a page from Allie Pressman’s book and _’fucking post something sometime’_.

Later, when they’re mostly done shooting and they’re just wrapping some B-roll of the farm during the pretty dusk lighting, Harry sees Allie and Grizz standing under the pop-up tent where they have some snacks and drinks set up. She laughs at something Grizz says and then he leaves, and Harry just…

This is stupid. 

“Return the favour?” he asks, holds out his phone, and watches her whole face light up. 

“You really trust me with this?” She swipes open the camera and he can tell she’s just a little nervous. It’s funny to him. He pushes his hand through his hair and he thinks she’s already taking his photo. He’s not really ready, and he’s definitely backlit by the setting sun, but whatever. 

“What are you doing?” he asks when she starts turning his phone at weird angles. He’s laughing, but also what the fuck?

“Yes. Give me perturbed-director-on-set energy. Give me end-of-day-stubble and messy hair. A look.”

He rolls his eyes and tilts his head at her, and steps forward, reaches for his phone as she continues laughing. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

She gets this sort of hot little look on her face and shrugs one shoulder. “Really I’m just flattered you’d ask _me_ , and not someone who knows what they’re doing.”

He puts his phone in his pocket. “I’m sure I’ll regret it when I look at these later.” She laughs again, rolls her eyes dramatically. “Good day?”

Allie yawns, which sort of tells the story, doesn’t it? They started early and it’s been easily 12 hours. “It was good. Grizz is great to work with.” He nods, because he’s obviously agrees and he’s really glad she’s getting on with Grizz well, too. “I’m trying to really enjoy these light days with the less heavy dialogue. Save my emotions for the big stuff.”

Harry nods. He doesn’t know a lot about her process; he doesn’t really care. If he’s being honest, she’s kind of nailing it. It doesn’t matter to him how she gets there. She doesn’t need a million takes, and she knows her shit. In a week, she’s only asked for another take once after he’s wanted to move on, and he could tell she was nervous bringing it up. He’s got an incredible crew, so they had the time and he didn’t mind indulging her, though he isn’t sure the final take was better than the one before. But he thinks she felt better about it.

He remembers Kelly used to talk to him all the time about how she prepared and what she needed and he never really knew how to respond. Sometimes the shit she needed set production back and he couldn’t stand that. It’s partly why he doesn’t get involved with actors anymore. He should’ve said no to Kelly. He would’ve been able to if they hadn’t been sleeping together. If he hadn’t been distracted.

He posts a photo later, when he gets home. It’s one of the first ones she took, when you can really only see his silhouette and his hand’s in his hair and the sky’s a little orange. He says _’Photo by @AlliePressman. Styling by @HarryBingham.’_ and leaves it at that. He thinks it’s a little funny to copy her and to tag his handle like she did in hers with the stylists. 

She likes the photo an hour later, comments with the camera emoji. Grizz comments that they had an epic day. Harry realizes he’s never had a cast that was made up of people mostly his age like this before. That’ll change soon, when the rest of the actors making up Eliza’s family will show up over the next few weeks.

Harry silences his notifications because he’s got a couple hours of work to do tonight and can’t let himself get distracted by something as stupid as Instagram. 

… … …

She wakes up to a media tornado talking about ‘on set fun’ and ‘cute bts pics’ from her and Harry. Apparently Grizz got one yesterday, too, posted to his stories about the location, and she’s in the background somewhere with Becca. No one knows much about the project, and she’s gotten the impression Harry kind of wants to keep it that way. 

Entertainment Tonight Canada reaches out to her to see if she wants to do an interview. Her publicist tells her it’ll be a short thing, just a brief interview shot at their downtown studios. Allie doesn’t really want to do it, and doesn’t think she should have to. There’s nothing to promote yet. They’ve fucking barely started filming. 

Honestly, she’s sort of scared that people are going to talk to her about Cassandra. Because they won’t care what kind of family member dies in the movie. They’ll connect it back to her own actual loss and how she ‘uses that’ to make things happen on screen. And they aren’t even wrong, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s gotten out of it quite a lot by simply saying it’s one of the topics she won’t talk about. She knew people would do this when she took on this project. Maybe she should’ve been more prepared for that to start now.

God, what’s she talking about? She hasn’t even confirmed anything. She doesn’t want to do the interview and she thinks it’s too early for this kind of promo, so she says no. Simple.

But then, on the way to set, she starts getting DMs from different outlets, and she ends up just handing Becca her phone and wanting to sort of ignore everything. 

She shouldn’t be in such a bad mood when she arrives on location, but she’s been thinking about her sister, plus all these invasions of privacy, since she woke up. She wants to just go to work and do her job. This is the part of it she likes, right? She wants to be able to ignore all the bullshit and get her shots in the can. It’s not that easy, and it’s never been that easy, and she should be able to handle that by now. And she’d be fine if she hadn’t immediately panicked about fielding questions about Cassandra. She can just say she won’t talk about it. She’ll do that. But first, she has work to do and she is never going to let stupid press opportunities get in the way of her actual job. She needs to try to stop being pissed that people want to talk to her. It’s not unreasonable. 

Grizz brings her a chocolate croissant in the makeup trailer when she’s having her skin primed, and she tells him she loves him, which may be overkill, but whatever. It just makes her think maybe things will start looking up. 

But then Harry seems to be in a mood today, too. Allie doesn’t really get it. They’re filming a funeral scene, and she’s in all black and there are sunglasses as part of her wardrobe, but he nixes those when he sees them because he wants to get her eyes. He says something about her eyes being expressive, but Allie thinks she’s not supposed to hear that. Not that it’s a secret; she’s heard that before. He’s not the first director to notice.

The shoes she’s in are uncomfortable, and she’s got to stand there in front of a casket for too long to be considered normal. The whole cast is on set, and Grizz is usually the one between takes keeping everyone’s spirits high, but this is emotional and hard and Allie just…

After Harry calls cut once, she can’t stop crying. Maybe her thinking about Cassandra, her worry about people asking, was just her projecting because she knew what she’d have to do today. She knew she’d need to access the sadness. She’s _done this_ before. She’s buried someone close to her. And it’s different, because she _loved_ Cassandra, and Eliza is feeling mixed emotions over her mother’s death. Allie’s emotions have never been mixed and have always fallen somewhere between devastated and completely overcome with grief. 

Harry gives her an odd look like he doesn’t know what’s gotten into her, and calls for a 15 minute break. He doesn’t say anything to her, just seems to know she needs it and doesn’t want to make a big thing of it. She sort of appreciates it. Allie doesn’t even leave set. She’s just sitting on this stupid folding chair by this prop casket in this cemetery in the middle of nowhere. 

Becca comes to her side quickly, bottle of water and some placating words, and Allie’s nodding along. Becca’s telling her she’s okay, that this is fine, that she can do this. That it’s okay if she’s sad about Cassandra. That it’s okay if she uses it. Becca knows this is a thing that Allie’s always struggled with. Like, capitalizing off her fucking heartbreak. 

She notices Harry hasn’t strayed too far. Usually on breaks, he’s off in his trailer or a site office with his nose in some papers or having side conversations or watching playback. Right now, he’s standing with his arms crossed, sort of keeping one eye on her. She knows it’s because she’s holding things up; they didn’t have a break scheduled for another 45 minutes. 

When Becca’s walking away, Allie watches Harry look at her, and she doesn’t know what expression is on Becca’s face, but he purses his lips a little. 

He comes closer, and Allie takes a deep breath, tilts her head back, and straightens her posture. 

“You ready?” he asks. 

Shit. Has it been 15 already? Must be something close to it. 

Allie nods, though she isn’t entirely sure if she’s telling the truth. He makes some gesture, and then hair and makeup are there fussing with her and Grizz is walking back onto set to take his place across from her, hitting his mark like a pro. 

She feels like she’s ruining everything. She has a feeling Harry would just tell her if she was. She needs to get her shit together before that actually becomes a thing.

She’s still worrying about it later, even in her room after she’s ordered a club sandwich and salad because she didn’t feel like going out; Becca and Grizz went off in search of some grilled cheese place they read about on a blog. She’s still agonizing about it after talking to her mom, and her manager, and even Luke, who’d finally had a small break in his schedule that synced up with one of hers. 

She texts Harry because she doesn’t want him to think she can’t handle this, okay? She thinks that’s been one of his hangups about her all along, though he’s never actually come out and said it. She doesn’t want to give him any reason to doubt her. They’re early enough into production that she’s still proving herself. He hasn’t had any harsh notes for her or anything that could even be seen as more than just a firm request. And she’s never argued about it. She knows her job here is to say the lines he wrote the way he wants her to say them. He’s not stifling her, or anything like that, and she’s not complaining about him having specific things he wants done in specific ways. Honestly, this is the same as all the other directors she’s worked with. It’s only different because the project is so much bigger. They’re working well together.

Anyway, she texts him. She just says, _’Sorry about earlier. Won’t happen again.’_

He replies back almost immediately. _’All good. Weird stuff to shoot. You okay?’_

Allie sinks down a little on the sofa in her suite. She’s got some cooking show on in the background, one of those ones where everyone’s got to make cupcakes or whatever and it’s some kind of race. It’s really just making her want something sweet. 

She wonders if he’s connected the dots to Cassandra and if that’s why he’s asking if she’s okay. Maybe he doesn’t have any idea, other than what he might’ve seen on that google search, and she’s not going to bring it up. Certainly not over text, if she does at all. Which she doesn’t think she should or needs to. 

_’I’m fine. Just your typical Emotional Actor 😉’_

Shit. She shouldn’t have sent that fucking emoji. _Shit._

He doesn’t reply for a few minutes, and Allie’s kicking herself for being so casual with this guy who’s her fucking boss, or whatever. What is wrong with her?

When he sends back _’You’re doing a great job.’_ she really doesn’t know what the hell she’s supposed to do with that. 

But she does feel this little surge of adrenaline, or something. The kind of thing she always gets when someone she admires praises her. Or even just someone important. Like she needs the reminder sometimes that she _is_ good at this. She’s been a working actor for long enough that you’d think she wouldn’t feel so insecure about things, but this...This is just a huge step in her career, and it _means_ something that Harry Bingham even hired her, let alone that he’s telling her she’s doing well. 

So she just thanks him, and knows that ends the conversation, and she’s happy with that. It’s fine. He’s not going to tell her to get her shit together when she shows up to work tomorrow. She thinks he actually didn’t think for a second that she didn’t have her shit together in the first place. 

… … …

There’s a two day break in the schedule because he doesn’t like to work people to the point of exhaustion, and especially when they’re shooting on location, he likes to at least build a little time in for people to go home and see family or do whatever it is they might have to do. He learns quickly that Allie’s staying in town, though Becca’s going to New York to ‘handle a few things’, whatever that means. And Grizz is staying around, too. He and Grizz have actually gone to grab food a couple times since shooting started, so they make plans to try this one brunch diner in the east end they’ve heard good things about. 

He arranges a box at a Raptors game for a bunch of the people who’re sticking around. He doesn’t really want to go, but he does anyway when some of the crew twist his arm and also he realizes it’d be sort of a dick move to just not show at all and distance himself from everyone. 

Allie’s sitting on one of the stools, a glass of white wine and a slice of pizza in front of her. Her hair’s all wild in that way it gets sometimes, and she’s got on this blue shirt dress that… She looks great. He’s getting used to thinking she looks great. She’s talking with Grizz, who’s leaning his elbow on the table next to her. They look like they’re...If he didn’t know what he knows about Grizz that not a lot of other people know, he’d almost mistakenly think there’s something going on there. They’re close. He thinks it’s great that they seem to be building a friendship, too, and not just because it’ll help it all look more believable on screen.

“You came!” she says, leaning back in her seat and reaching for his wrist. 

He laughs a little. She’s never really touched him before, except when she comes up behind him so she can see herself on playback, and puts a hand on his shoulder or whatever. 

“So did you.”

Yeah, she’s way too fucking pretty. 

“We should get a picture.” He wants to object, but she’s already reaching for her phone.

Harry rolls his eyes. She’s always taking pictures. She’s like, the most active on social media of the entire cast. She doesn’t ever post anything super specific to what they’re working on any given day. She posts a lot of selfies. Becca’s in a lot of them, or takes some for her. She also posts a lot of stories about the places she goes around the city. She spent a whole day at St. Lawrence Market, apparently, and did a little food tour, posted all this stuff she ate. And yes, he looked at all her posts. He gets bored when he’s not working. Instagram never used to be a thing he used to wind down at night before sleep, but it’s a thing now. He sort of wants to see what she puts out there. And he thinks her fans are funny.

She hands one of the crew members, Alec, her phone and pulls Harry in close, her arm looped through his, and Grizz leans down so his head’s sort of between them. Harry smiles a little and then Alec tells him to stop looking like he’s afraid of the camera. Harry rolls his eyes, and Allie’s reaching up with her other hand, tugging on his arm to get him closer. It makes him laugh, and then Alec’s handing her phone back. 

“These are for me,” she says, and it feels like she’s trying to tell him something else. “Not for posting.”

“Sure.”

“Who are you cheering for?” she asks, turns back towards the court. Harry honestly couldn’t give a single fuck about basketball.

“Golden State,” Grizz says, sips his beer. Harry takes a deep breath. He used to go to Lakers games all the time and drink expensive beer with whoever he’d brought with him, and… 

“Can’t debate about Steph Curry,” Harry says, though that’s literally the only player he knows on that team. On either team. Shit. 

Allie sips her wine, rolls her eyes at both of them. “I’m cheering for who Drake’s cheering for.” She glances across the court, to where Drake’s sitting next to the home team. 

Harry pulls his phone out. “You wanna meet him?” he asks, already pulling up Drake’s contact in his messages. 

“Shut up,” Allie laughs, then her eyes are a little wide. “Seriously?” 

He shrugs, taps out a message. It helps that he says it’s Allie Pressman who he wants to introduce. He knows people know who she is and what she looks like. And he knows Drake likes beautiful women. 

At the end of the quarter, Drake messages him back, tells him it’s been ages since they saw each other, says yeah, he’d like to meet Allie, and to come to a certain gate and give his name.

They’re walking through this tunnel that’s sort of packed with people, and Harry instinctively reaches back for Allie’s hand, takes her wrist so they can get through the throngs of people. Like, sure they’ve got bodyguards and she won’t get lost, or something, but he doesn’t want them to get separated.

He hangs back a little as she talks to this other celebrity. Harry finds this shit a little boring. He didn’t used to, but that was when he was high and everything felt like it was more fun. And also when he was younger and knowing all these random people felt like clout, or whatever. Right now, he’s hearing Allie talk about how much she genuinely loves this city and always has, and Drake is literally telling her where she should shop on her days off. 

It’s a short five minute meeting, and when they’re walking away she cuts her eyes towards him and smiles. 

“What?” he laughs when she doesn’t look away. 

“Kind of a flex,” she says, and he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “Hitting up your super famous friends, and whatever.”

He rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t showing off. I thought you’d want to meet him.”

He was kind of showing off, or at very least trying to impress her. He wants her to like him. That’s not crazy. Honestly, part of him’s surprised she’s never met the guy before; she’s been working in the industry just about as long as Harry has.

“I did.” She pushes her hair off her face. “Thanks for that.” 

He shrugs his shoulder. It’s really nothing. “And he and I aren’t like, friends. We’ve met a few times.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. More of a Doja Cat fan, myself.”

Allie laughs at his stupid joke, the sound echoing through the concrete hallway. There’s a bodyguard in front of them and another behind them. He thinks he and Allie are both so used to it, it doesn’t really register. Game play is starting back up by the time they’re on the main concourse, so there are fewer people around who seem to be noticing. Some people are taking photos, but no one’s stopping them. 

When they’re back in the box, he wanders, makes the rounds and talks to different people. At the start of the fourth quarter, he decides to head out. Allie and Grizz are talking to one of the lead set dressers, and Harry just slips out quietly without telling anyone. His bodyguard follows him, takes him to the car and he’s just walking through the door of his house when Allie texts him. 

_’You left?’_

He can almost read it like she’s disappointed. He doesn’t hate that. Maybe he should’ve said goodbye.

_’Irish goodbyes are my brand.’_

It’s true. It’s been widely reported. 

She sends back the eye roll emoji and tells him to have a good night. He says the same and wonders what the rest of them will get up to. He just...He left because the drinks were flowing, and it was making him antsy, and he’s already talked to his sponsor and also messaged Dom and set up a time for them to talk tomorrow. He’s fine, and honestly proud of himself for being strong enough to get away from shit that was tempting him and not giving in. He was fucking terrified being back on a set would make him do something to fuck up his progress. So far so good. 

Grizz messages him, too, and then Harry thinks he’ll get a bunch of work in while it’s quiet, but he’s all distracted. It’s fucking dumb. He’s thinking about Allie. About how nice she is and how desperate he is for her approval. It’s stupid because he has no reason to think he doesn’t already have it. He doesn’t need to try so hard to get it. But it’s messed up that he doesn’t mind the effort. He just isn’t interested in coming off desperate, either, and he’s also spending some time thinking about why it is he wants _her_ , specifically, to like him and take him seriously. 

Like, he usually couldn’t give a single fuck about what actors think of him. He’s there to do a job and so are they, and part of their job is to do what he says even if they don’t agree. And when he was way younger and just starting out, he was a fucking asshole. He knows this. It was sort of spread around after his first film and he had to do a lot of press and work - actual work that would change his behaviour - to dig himself out of that hole. Now, when people ask him about it, it’s framed as ‘what advice would you give young directors just starting out on how to get the most out of their cast and crew?’. And it’s sort of fucked, too, because he’s not even 30. Most ‘young directors’ are older than him.

It's just different with Allie. And Grizz, too, if he’s being honest. Maybe he should just chalk it up to the fact that they’re the two actors who’ve decided to trust him despite knowing his past and the risk associated with not only working with him on his screenwriting debut, but working with him after everything that’s happened. He knew he’d have to prove himself. That’s not surprising. 

He doesn’t want them to have to lie when people ask how it was working on the project. 

… … …

Allie wakes up to her phone blowing up and Becca sitting at the edge of her bed. She sleeps naked, which Becca knows and...This just isn’t the first time. She and Becca literally don’t have secrets. They can’t. And they wouldn’t, probably, even if they could. 

“What?” Allie asks, and she’s about to say she wanted to sleep in today and be a little pissy about that, but then she sees that it’s 9:30am and she’s definitely had her sleep in. 

There are literally 57 notifications on her phone. 

“This,” Becca says, and turns around her iPad to show Allie a blurry, zoomed in photo of Harry holding her wrist as they walked through the tunnel at the arena last night. “People are losing it.”

Allie rolls her eyes and flops onto her back, pulls the sheet up to cover herself better, stares at the ceiling. 

Literally every time she’s ever seen anywhere with a member of the opposite sex, this happens. And that in itself is fucked up, because like. Ugh. Not everyone is straight. But also it’s just stupid. It’s some When Harry Met Sally ‘men and women can’t be friends’ trash that is fucking dumb. And she and Harry aren’t friends. She doesn’t think. And his hand was literally on her for like, nine seconds, max. The fact that someone took a photo and posted it somewhere and it’s clearly gone viral and been talked about on every site, apparently, from TMZ to Buzzfeed is genuinely annoying and the kind of shit she hates. 

“You know there’s nothing to talk about,” she says, and it’s the truth. “Ignore it.”

“Oh, I have no problem ignoring it,” Becca says, laughing, and swiping out of the app to open the calendar. Allie knows there’s nothing scheduled for today and if that’s changed, she’s going to be irritated. “I just think it’s funny that he’s literally like, the hottest guy either of us has ever laid eyes on and you’re all _there’s nothing to talk about_.”

Allie narrows her eyes, annoyed. “If you’re implying there’s something going on...Becca, you actually own my schedule. If I were sneaking off for trysts with my boss, you’d be the one who knew about it.”

Becca raises a brow and zooms in comically close on the photo, holds it up to Allie. “Looks like sneaking off, is all I’m saying.”

“You caught me. Harry and I wandered off in a _packed arena_ with our bodyguards watching and had some dirty fuck against a concrete wall.”

Becca grins. _Ugh_. “That’s an oddly specific fantasy, Allie.”

“Shut up!” Allie squeals, laughing, reaching for a pillow and lobbing it in Becca’s direction.

Look, Harry is attractive. She’s known that for longer than she’s been working with him. God, that tux he wore to the Oscars when he won was literally fucking perfect on him. It’s not like she can’t see it and isn’t attracted to him. But he is _actually_ her boss, and she doesn’t date people in the industry. It’s messy and complicated, and also…

God, what is she even _talking about_? She doesn’t want to date him, and there’s no way he’d want to date her. This is literally a pointless train of thought. She’s as bad as the gossip sites for entertaining it for even a second, and she’s going to blame Becca for that. 

But then Becca says, “I’m Ubering breakfast sandwiches from that bagel place in Kensington,” and Allie forgives her. “There are also a couple scripts for you to read. Do you want those now or later?”

Yeah, since she was cast in this movie, people have been sending her things, instead of her agent having to call and beg and plead for Allie to have a shot. And it’s not a lot, just one or two here or there over the last however many months since the news came out. But it’s flattering and kind of insane and also everything she’s ever wanted. 

“After coffee,” she says, and Becca nods, points towards the kitchenette, which Allie assumes means it’s brewing. 

“And your mom called. I told her you’d call back.”

Allie closes her eyes. Fuck. Her mom definitely saw that picture and is absolutely calling to ask Allie about it. She does this every time. Talks about how Allie’s always a closed book and Cassandra always told her everything. She always makes this shitty joke about how one day Allie will get married and she’ll find out about it on Twitter, or something. It’s fucking dumb and not true. 

Allie just never has anything to tell. 

She opens her phone when Becca gets up. Most of the notifications are moronic, so she ignores them. Grizz sends her three laughing emojis because he _gets it_. Twitter is having a fucking hay day, which...They always do when there’s anything remotely like this about her or any celebrity. In particular, fans of her show who have always wanted her and Luke to get together are all over it. The more logical things she’s seeing are people saying this is way overblown and exactly why Allie hardly ever hangs out in public with other celebrities. It makes her laugh at the accuracy. 

And then Harry messages her _’Sorry for all this’_.

Allie laughs and types back _’You’re not the first guy to be falsely reported as my boyfriend. Won’t be the last. Don’t worry about it.’_

He replies _’And to think I was flattered.’_

Allie puts her phone down and picks up her bagel.

What the _fuck_ is happening?

… … …

He and Grizz spend the day in Harry’s rental house, eating pasta Harry cooked and donuts Grizz brought and watching Golden Girls because they realized early in filming that it’s a show both of them think is more or less perfect. It’s honestly one of his favourite days, and he's glad it’s happening before they go back to filming tomorrow. Harry’s got some prep work to do, but he’ll do that later, after Grizz leaves. 

He spent most of yesterday dealing with the fucking media and his publicist and his _mom_ , who thinks Allie is pretty and they look good together. As if he needs her on the side of the insane fans with all the speculation. She’s at least laughing as she says she’s had this thought since Allie was cast and she went and googled her to see pictures. He couldn’t honestly tell you why he felt like that mattered, but whatever. 

Harry’s pouring them sparkling water and Grizz is leaning on the kitchen island and surprises Harry by asking, “How are you doing?”

And Harry puts this confused look on his face, because they’ve been hanging out for like, four hours today and he’s fine. 

“Good?” he says, laughing a little as he sets the glass down in front of Grizz. “What’re you asking?”

Because yeah, he thinks he knows, but he sort of wants Grizz to come out with it, and honestly would be surprised if he didn’t. Grizz is good, and direct, and actually cares about people. It’s part of his personality, not just his brand. Harry admires it. 

“Getting back to work and handling your sobriety,” Grizz clarifies. Harry leans his hand on the counter. 

“I mean, still sober. So it could be worse.” He thinks it’s funny, a little, but Grizz doesn’t really react and is just looking at him. “To be honest, it’s easier when I don’t have time to think about it.” Grizz nods, but Harry continues. “I was going fucking insane in L.A. doing nothing. My therapist keeps warning me not to replace one addiction with another, but working keeps my mind busy and gives me some focus.”

“I hear that,” Grizz says, nodding, and then takes a sip of his water. “Look, I won’t pretend I know what you’re dealing with, but if you ever need to talk about it, let me know.”

Harry feels kind of...It’s just nice. He thinks Grizz is the first friend he’s made - other than Dom - who knows him as someone who’s sober. Knows him and likes him anyway. 

“Thanks,” Harry says quietly, sincerely. 

They go back to the living room, and then somehow they end up talking about Allie. Grizz has a light week for filming, and is actually heading to New York to do some press for his last project on Wednesday and Thursday. The bulk of Allie’s scenes will be with Charlize, who’s playing her aunt. 

“Allie’s like, really fucking good,” Grizz says, clearly a little surprised. Just like Harry was. Which makes sense, honestly. Grizz got his start in indie films and then burst onto the scene in a Cohen Brothers film. Allie’s route is...it’s different. They’re not crazy to be impressed she’s got the range for this. 

“I know. I was skeptical. I didn’t want to hire her.” That’s true, too. He knows it’s fucked up to tell Grizz, but he doesn’t think the guy’ll say anything to her about it. “That show was fucking terrible.”

Grizz laughs. “It wasn’t _that_ bad.”

Harry raises a brow. That sounds like something a guy who watched every episode and is a fan would say. Harry doesn’t call him on it. 

“She just had this like…” Harry takes a breath. Why is he still talking? There’s no need for him to continue here. “There’s something about how she approached it that made her feel different to me.” He’s gonna have to learn how to articulate this better before press time. He’s got a long way to go before that’s an issue. “And she wanted it so fucking badly.”

Grizz smiles. Harry’s absolutely positive those two have talked about this, too. Harry doesn’t want to admit that part of the reason he didn’t fight Carla too hard about this was because of the way Allie’d been so openly complimentary about his writing. But it’s kind of true. 

“She’s gonna blow everyone away.”

Harry agrees. He doesn’t say it, but he agrees. 

… … …

Allie falls a little in love with Charlize. She knows she’s not the only one. Charlize is just like...fucking _stunning_ , and also super nice and generous and _good_ at this. Her first day on set, she kisses Harry’s cheeks and they talk like they’re old friends, and Allie realizes they might be. They’re in the makeup trailer and Allie’s sitting there getting her face contoured and Harry rests his hand on the back of her chair, his fingers sort of brushing Allie’s shoulder through the robe she’s wearing. She’s not really _eavesdropping_ , because they’re literally right next to her. And she and Charlize were introduced 20 minutes ago when she first arrived in the trailer and… She needs to stop obsessing about this. She isn’t starstruck and that’s not what’s throwing her. No, she just...Harry’s hand feels nice against her, and she likes his laugh and the way he’s saying something about Allie ‘holding her own’, or something like he’s downplaying it. Allie looks in the mirror and sees him in profile, and she has to force herself to stop.

She finds her mind, more and more, slipping into this territory where she thinks of Harry in ways that are absolutely crossing a line. She has to cut it out. She sees now how film sets are different than television. It feels less like a family and more like the beginning of a relationship when everything is shiny and new. She should’ve listened to Grizz way back during that first week when he’d asked her if she’d gotten her first film set crush yet, and said “Give it time,” when she’d answered in the negative.

Their first scene together, Allie has to tell Charlize to go fuck herself, and the first take, Charlize ends up smiling before Harry says cut, which is definitely not part of the script. They all start laughing and they shake it off and reset everything and Charlize tells her, “You surprised me. I really felt that. _So_ good.”

They wait for Allie to stop blushing before Harry calls action again. He looks at her like he 100% knows how she’s feeling, and she ignores that, too. 

Charlize does some local press which gets picked up everywhere and she’s singing Allie’s praises. Allie’s publicist retweets the video clip from Allie’s account and uses the blushing emoji. Allie wonders if any of this shit is ever going to feel normal. But she knows it will, which is almost scarier. God, she remembers those first months on the set of the show, when things started getting some attention and there was all this press about her and Luke and the storylines and their chemistry and all that shit. It had felt so foreign, and then over time it started feeling like just part of the job. 

But Allie kind of doesn’t ever want to stop feeling flattered that people she admires think she’s _good_.

She lies in her bed and Becca comes in and they watch this dumb reality show together and Becca holds her hand and says, “It’s all happening.” 

Allie nods, holds onto Becca like a lifeline, and honestly...God, Becca and Cassandra were the only two who always believed she’d get here. The only two. Now Allie’s down to one person with this seemingly never ending faith in her, and she turns her head to look at her best friend. 

“I love you. You know that, right?”

Becca laughs, rolls her eyes. “Obviously.”

Allie smiles and takes a deep breath and tries not to miss Cassandra so hard it hurts. 

… … …

He’s never been this frustrated with Allie. 

Frankly, she’s usually better than this. He figured she'd get the shitty takes out of the way in the first week. They’re over halfway through filming and she’s lost it. Literally, all the amazing work she’s been doing...Wherever her ability to do all that has gone, he doesn’t know. He just knows they’ve got an hour left to get this take and Grizz’s coverage and Allie’s shitting the bed. 

He asks to talk to her, pulls her away from everyone. Grizz follows, but that’s fine. This is about the scene they’re doing, this thing filmed on the back porch of this house where they’re drinking together and she’s talking about how her life is falling apart. It’s supposed to be raw and emotional and everything Allie is doing is falling flat. 

“Help me understand what’s going on,” he says, and he sounds a little clipped, but he’s really just...He’s genuinely asking. “What do you need?”

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. She raises her hand to put it in her hair, but stops herself. He’s thankful; they don’t really have time for hair and makeup to have to reset absolutely everything. 

“I’m just...Everything I do feels awkward. I don’t think she’d just be _sitting_ there.” 

Yeah, they’ve had this conversation. She’d asked him three hours ago if Eliza could get up and lean on the railing, or - god, she fucking suggested she throw a beer bottle off the porch and he just thinks that’s stupid. Eliza’s supposed to be despondent. Hopeless. She’s not _angry_ , she’s resigned. 

“Okay, well. Do it anyway?” he says. Allie scoffs out a laugh. Grizz seems to be watching them go back and forth. “We discussed it. I know what you want to do and I said no. Can you just...get there faster?”

Her eyes narrow a little. Harry gets the impression that she’s not used to hearing no when she wants to try different things. And it’s true he’s been really open to her thoughts when she wants a take or two with different blocking. Last week during one take she went totally off script and he didn’t stop it because she was in the zone and he thought it sounded good. 

“I’m trying,” she says, and it sounds like she really just wants him to know. Like she doesn’t want him to think she’s just being stubborn because she didn’t get her way. “Do you want me to play more drunk?”

“No,” he says firmly. He sees Grizz’s mouth open, then close. “I want you to do it exactly like I said.”

She takes another deep breath. He doesn’t know what her process is. Grizz puts a hand on her back. Harry just…

“Can I have like, two minutes,” she asks, looking up at him from under her lashes like she knows she’s pushing it. 

Harry sighs, “Allie.”

“I just need to calm down and not feel like I’m fucking terrible at my job, okay?” she says, snapping, and he clenches his jaw because he doesn't appreciate it, but he also thinks he understands. 

He holds up his hands. “Fine. Whatever you want, princess.”

She gets this look on her face, and her jaw drops, and Grizz gives him a look that’s basically telling him to get the fuck away from her right now, and Harry wants to do just that. Everything’s too tense; if he leaves, maybe that’ll help.

Like, he’s not trying to be an asshole and he doesn’t actually believe that’s how he’s acting. He’s just trying to keep them on track. If they don’t wrap this on time, they go into overtime with all the unionized staff, and they did that yesterday, too. He’s not gonna get a slap on the wrist for that, necessarily, because he knows they padded the budget, but he also doesn’t want to push his luck. Especially not when he knows some of the harder shit to film is coming up, things that require closing city streets and bringing in cranes, and all that shit. 

None of this is Allie’s fault. He’ll apologize later, once she’s done what he needs her to do.

She nails it in the next two takes, leaves set as soon as he’s said they’ve got it, stomps off towards her trailer and doesn’t really give anyone a chance to talk to her. Harry wants to roll his eyes at how dramatic she’s being. This is the most diva-like behaviour he’s ever seen from her, even though it’s obviously not even that bad. She’s usually so chill and amenable that he’s actually legitimately worried something’s wrong, and knows he should check in with her in a bit. 

He goes to his own trailer, starts packing up his shit for the day. It’s barely evening, they just started way early again today. His day doesn’t end just because they’re done filming, so he checks his calendar and wonders where the PA is who usually brings him ice water once they’ve wrapped for the day.

There’s a knock at the door, so he calls for them to come in, figuring it’s the PA. But it’s not. It’s Allie, out of her wardrobe and in jeans and a grey sweatshirt.

He sits up, leans his forearm on the table in front of him. 

“Do you have a second?” she asks, and he’s holding his phone in his hand. He nods, despite the fact that he’s barely got what she’s asking for anyway. 

“I have a call in like three minutes.”

“Won’t take long.” He takes a good look at her, then. Her face is clean of all her makeup and her hair’s pulled back off her face in such a way that’s messy enough for him to assume she’s done it herself. Her eyes are red. Fuck. Maybe today was harder on her than he thought.

He turns his body to her a bit and gives her his attention. 

“It’s not a big deal, but princess was the nickname my parents had for my dead sister, so could you not call me that again?”

His heart does this messed up thing and he actually feels fucking terrible. He remembers reading somewhere about her sister passing away. Some heinous and violent random murder that he doesn’t know the details of and selfishly doesn’t want to learn about. He realizes that the look on her face isn’t sadness, but vulnerability. She doesn’t talk about her sister. He doesn’t blame her. If he’d known that fact she just said, he never would’ve... 

“Yeah,” he breathes, and then thinks that sounded too...something. He clears his throat. “Yeah, shit. Of course. I’m sorry.”

She shrugs, and tucks her hands into her sweater’s sleeves. “You couldn’t have known. I wouldn’t have even said anything, but it kind of fucked me up.” He doesn’t mean to grin, but it’s just that he thinks it’s hot when she swears. It’s a stupid thought and definitely the wrong moment to think it. Not that there’s a good moment. His phone rings in his hand and she gestures to it. “Anyway. Thanks.”

“Sure,” he says, and then she turns around and leaves, and he answers his phone, and he thinks he knows more about her than he’d actually wanted to. It’s messed up. He’s not trying to know her. But he likes it, too. 

Fuck, maybe he’s just lying to himself. Maybe he does want to get to know her better.

And the director in him wonders if her being fucked up about that was the thing that gave her the ability to do what he’d needed her to do. Knowing what he knows, though, she’s just too stubborn and didn’t want him to have any reason to doubt she could do it. And the thing is, he didn’t. He knew she could. It was surprising that it was taking so long, but he didn’t think for a second that she was just fucking incapable. He trusts her at this point. 

He’s still thinking about it later. Way later. When he’s home and by himself and trying to wonder why he still feels off. He realizes he didn’t even really get a chance to apologize for the other thing. For pushing her hard and not exactly being gentle about it, either. 

Calling her feels less weird than it did last time. 

“Hey,” she says all softly, but like she’s happy to hear from him. It makes him smile. Fuck. 

“Hey. I just wanted to call and check in on you.”

She laughs quietly. “Really?”

Yeah, she likes this. It shouldn’t matter in the slightest. No, it should, right? He shouldn’t be apologizing to make himself feel better, but because it’s the right thing to do and he owes it to her. It shouldn’t be about him. 

“Yeah,” he nearly whispers, and then rolls his eyes at himself. “I was hard on you today, and I wanted to apologize.”

“Oh god,” she laughs. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yes, I do. I could’ve been more gentle.”

She pauses. He desperately wants to know what she’s thinking. 

“I was all in my head. I actually needed you to be a little harsh, apparently. I think I was having a tantrum and just like, pouting, which isn’t productive at all.” He laughs, leans his elbows on the kitchen counter. “I’m sorry I was such a brat.” 

“All good,” he says, and honestly, all this work he’s done through rehab and the program and therapy is making his communication skills top notch. He doesn’t think he’s ever delivered an apology and so quickly felt better about shit. 

“Harry?” 

“Hm.”

“I really like working with you,” she says all genuinely, and he just… It means something. It means something that it’s true and that she’s saying it. “I mean, I assumed you were really good at what you do, but it’s...I’m learning a lot and I really appreciate you.”

Harry might be emotional. Just a little bit. He didn’t think he needed to hear something like that, but it feels so fucking good, and it’s genuinely a relief.

“Thanks, Allie,” he tells her softly, and hears her breathing in his ear. He’s gotta hang up before he does something stupid like ask her what she’s doing right now and suggest they go for a drive, or something. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She laughs a little. “I’ll be there.”

They hang up, and he just...He should talk to someone about these feelings he has about her that he really, really can’t do anything about. He can’t stop them and he can’t act on them. Yeah, he should talk to someone. His therapist or Dom or something. Dom’ll get it. Dom’s married to a hot actor, too. He probably has some advice.

… … …

Harry invites a few of them to his place to have dinner on a day off and there are just three weeks of filming left. He says something about how he really likes making homemade pasta, and Grizz says it’s fucking delicious, and Allie was going to say yes anyway before the promise of a homecooked meal. 

Harry’s wearing a navy blue apron and rolling dough through a pasta roller he’s got clamped to the counter. There’s a wooden bowl on the kitchen island with a bunch of ingredients for sauce in it. Allie’s sitting atop the counter watching him, talking to him about his Italian background, or whatever. Grizz is sitting there playing DJ. She sort of thought there’d be more than just the four of them - just them and Becca - but she also doesn’t mind it at all. She’s more a fan of intimate crowds than she is big things anyway. 

There’s no alcohol, which Allie isn’t bothered by. Becca’d made a comment in the car on the way over, wondering how they’d have some big Italian feast without wine, but Allie just reminded her to, you know, not be an asshole about it. It’s not that it was Becca’s intent, it just...Allie can just imagine how hard it must be for him, and she knows he’s trying to sort of stage a comeback and what’s riding on this.

Anyway, Becca and Grizz go outside onto the back deck to share a joint, which Harry sort of laughed at when Grizz asked if it was cool. Harry’d said, “Dude, if weed was one of my issues my life would be so fucking easy. Go ahead.”

Allie had just tucked her hair behind her ear, not really knowing what to do with him so openly talking about this with them. 

“Okay, but, did some Nona teach you this?” she asks, and Harry laughs, uses one hand to catch the dough and one hand to crank this thing. “What’s the deal?”

“Taught myself,” he tells her. “When I was in film school my mentor told me my entire life couldn’t be taken up by one thing. She told me to get a hobby.” He shrugs, and Allie tilts her head and watches him. It’s like, actually really sexy to see him doing this. Almost hotter than him on set. Which is saying something. “I’ve done a dinner like this on all my projects.”

Allie grins. “And to think I was flattered.”

He cuts his eyes towards her, this little grin on his face like he’s impressed, or at least _likes_ that she’s using those words he said after that whole photo thing happened. 

“I mean…” He seems to be considering his words pretty hard. Allie really wants to know what he’s holding back. He stops with the pasta, looks at her, his body turned a bit and hand leaning on the counter. “I’d cook for you any time.”

She bites her lip because _fuck_ , what is he saying? Are they _flirting_?

He turns back before she can say or do anything about it, feeds the dough through the pasta roller and it comes out as linguine on the other side. He lays it carefully onto the baking sheet he has set out, and Allie just…

“It’s a little ridiculous that you’re good at everything, you know that?” It makes him laugh, shake his head. He wipes his hand, leaving flour handprints on his apron. Allie’s honestly never wanted him more. “And that you look the way you do while you’re doing it.”

He turns towards her again, eyes narrowed a little. He’s enjoying this as much as she is. She can tell. “How do I look?”

She just shakes her head. She shouldn’t have said that to begin with, and there’s only so far they can take this before it becomes a _very fucking bad idea_ and potentially ruins everything. Right now it’s harmless. Like, god, the guy knows how good he looks and he doesn’t need her to tell him. 

“Why don’t we ask some of your stans?” she asks, and Harry scoffs, then tilts his head before he goes back to the pasta, starts rolling out the next ball of dough. “What do they call themselves again? Bunnies?”

“Stop,” he says, laughing, and there’s a little colour on his cheeks. She’s honestly never seen him so relaxed, and it’s insane how much she likes it. “You’re one to talk. Twitter’s in love with you.”

“Well, yeah. I’m a delight.” He chuckles again and Allie watches his forearm flex where he’s got his shirt sleeves rolled up. She needs to chill. She can’t _want_ him. “It’s fucking weird to have all those people acting like they know me, honestly.”

“Right?” he says, and she loves that he understands. 

She thinks they might be friends. 

“Okay,” she says, hopping down off the counter. “What can I do? I feel like I should be doing something. Gimme a job.”

It ends up the only thing that needs doing is dishes, and she really doesn’t mind helping, despite Harry’s protesting. When Becca and Grizz come back inside, they both start drying, and then Harry’s actually _cooking_ , and looks fucking incredible doing that, too. Becca catches Allie’s eye at one point, mouths _’oh my god’_ , and Grizz sees it too and starts laughing. Harry asks what’s going on and Grizz makes a big show of shaking his hand and waving Harry off. Harry gives Allie a look and she just shrugs like she doesn’t know what’s funny. She hits Grizz gently on the thigh when Harry can’t see, and gives him a pleading look. 

At the end of the night, in the car on the way back to the hotel, Grizz is saying something about how Harry’s the kind of guy you realize pretty quickly that almost everyone has gotten wrong. 

Allie says, “It feels kind of nice to know he’s not like that,” and they all sort of go quiet after that.

… … …

Her friend Luke visits her on set, which Harry doesn’t mind at all. Like, the guy’s in an acclaimed Netflix Original and knows how this shit all works. It’s not like he needs hand holding or whatever. He hangs out in Allie’s trailer a while before they start her coverage for the day, and then he watches her work, his arms crossed and his head tilted a bit. He’s not in the way and he just looks proud of Allie, to be honest, which Harry thinks is nice for her.

She introduces them, finally, when they’re resetting for the next take. The guy says he’s a big fan, which Harry’s...He hears it a lot, okay? But it means something different when it comes from people in the industry. Luke says he wishes he could’ve read for the part Grizz got. Harry doesn’t know what to say to that. He just chuckles and crosses his arms, and Allie leads Luke away anyway, and he leaves set soon after. 

After, Allie steps into his trailer like she’s been doing the last week or so, since she realized he’s prone to staying way after everyone else is gone and she said he should either leave, too, or have company. She lies back on the couch and has her phone out. She takes a picture of herself lying there like that. He kind of wants to see it, but he doesn’t ask. He’s trying to wrap up his work for the day, has a couple emails to answer and things to set up for tomorrow. 

Looking at Allie lying there in her little cropped sweater, riding up a little how she’s lying back, and these jeans she always wears, and her hair all fanned out on the dark cushions on the sofa, he gets distracted. To be clear, he’s distracted by how hot she looks. He likes her. He likes the way she looks and how funny she is and how nice she is and how good she is at what she does. 

“Did you and Luke ever hook up?”

She looks really surprised, then leans up on her elbow and narrows her eyes at him like it’s a shitty thing to ask. But he doesn’t think it is. Random as fuck, sure. But not awful. Especially not in the context of the conversations they’ve been having every day like this when she joins him in here. Like, she’s asked him about rehab. He’s pretty sure him asking this question isn’t crossing a line. 

“He’s been with the same person since before we even met.”

Harry ticks a brow up, smirks. “Not sure that actually has anything to do with the question.”

Allie sits up, then stands, and he worries she’s legitimately pissed and is going to leave, but she just comes over and sits down across from him at the table. 

“Helena’s one of my best friends. And Luke’s like a brother to me. No, we never hooked up.” She sounds really firm, like she doesn’t want there to be any followup questions. Harry just nods. He doesn’t feel any different now that he’s got the answer, and he wonders why it felt so pressing before he asked. “And he’s not my type.”

Oh, okay. Interesting. 

“No?” She shrugs, shakes her head. “What’s your type?”

She takes a breath, and she looks at him, and her eyes go a little soft, and she just...He swears he sees her glance down at his lips, but she just shakes her head again. 

“I’m not sure. I have some ideas, but no concrete evidence.”

Harry laughs, leans his elbows on the table so he’s a little closer to her. “What kind of concrete evidence do you need, exactly?” 

“Chemistry,” she says, looking straight at him, and… _Fuck_. “Sparks fly, and all that.”

“In the words of the immortal Taylor Swift,” he says, and then looks back at the call sheets for tomorrow, and Allie lets out this laugh he likes the sound of. Yeah, they talked about Taylor Swift, too, the other day when Allie’d asked if she could put on some music and he said yes as long as it wasn’t anything shitty. “What else?”

“Not sure,” she answers, then stands. He looks up, realizes he doesn’t actually want her to go. “I’ll keep you posted.” He grins up at her and she pulls all her hair over one shoulder. “Since you seem so interested.”

He swallows, feels his grin fade, and he thinks she’s completely fucking onto him, even though he doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s playing at, here. 

He’s not _not_ interested. 

“Heading out?” he asks. 

She answers, “Not without you,” and Harry just has a lot of thoughts. 

They leave his trailer at the same time, 15 minutes later, and get into separate cars. 

… … …

She feels silly for crying when they wrap on her scenes. There are still two more days of filming, but she’s not on the call sheets and this is _it_ , and everyone’s clapping, and she’ll never have this back, you know? This is her _first_ movie and it’s such a big deal, and Harry and Grizz are just standing there smiling at her and clapping and she can’t help that she gets too emotional.

Becca’s already cleared all her personal stuff out of her trailer, so when she goes to change, the only thing that’s there is a change of clothes - these joggers she got from some local brand and has been living in, and a white tee shirt and denim jacket. She shouldn’t be _sad_ , but she is. She’s feeling a lot of things. She’s proud, and scared, and sad, and happy, and…

Harry walks in after knocking and saying it’s him. She didn’t say he could come in, but this is just the way they are now. She’s just pulling her shirt down over her chest and he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that at all, which is sort of typical. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, and Allie laughs a little at herself and nods. He seems to hesitate by the door a bit, and then walks towards her and puts his arms around her. For as close as they’ve gotten over the last however many weeks, they’ve never done this. 

She’s terrified by how much she likes it. How much she thinks she gives herself away when she takes this deep breath and slides her hands up his back. 

“I’m sad,” she says, and he laughs softly and nods his head, pulls back a little and looks down at her, his hands resting gently on her waist. She just blinks up at him. She’s not crying anymore, but she’s sure she’s a mess anyway. 

“When do you fly out?” he asks, and there’s...there’s something in his voice she can’t place. Like he’s asking this question very purposefully and he needs to know the answer. 

“Early tomorrow.”

He nods, but she thinks that’s not the answer he wanted. 

He doesn’t say anything about it, though. He just puts his hands on her face, leans in slowly, and kisses her. Which is absolutely not what she was expecting, but she finds she _wants it_ more than she should. More than she’s going to let on. And maybe that’s not even new. She presses her hands against his back and one of his curves over the side of her neck gently as the other slides along her jaw and up into her hair at the back of her head. His tongue grazes her bottom lip and she gives him what he wants, because she wants it, too. 

And then there’s a knock at the door and he moves away quickly, and she takes a step back and wipes her lips with her fingertips. Her eyes land on his and he looks confused, or embarrassed, or…

“I should go,” he tells her, and she really, really doesn’t want him to. “Sorry. That was…I just had to.”

“Had to?” she asks, and the knocking starts again. 

He sighs, pushes a hand through his hair. “Wanted to.”

And then he goes, and she isn’t really sure what the fuck she’s supposed to do with that, either. 

She figures they should talk about it, but he doesn’t answer her call later when she knows he’s done for the day, and then when she’s back in New York and texts him when she knows they’ve wrapped fully on filming and congratulates him, he just thanks her and that’s it. 

Allie doesn’t know what the fuck’s happened between them, but she chalks it up to them getting close during filming and that’s all it was and was never meant to be anything more. It’s just that she was fine with it not getting physical. Not that she didn’t want it. She did. She _does_ , she thinks. She just knew she’d want more if they did anything like this. That she wouldn’t want it to end. And on one hand, she’s happy he didn’t say or do anything or act on it until she was finished on the project, but on the other she thinks it’s messy of him to have done it at all. 

But he had to? He wanted to? 

Maybe what she’s really mad about is that he’s just going to ignore that it happened. Their friendship or connection or whatever was obviously confined to the little universe in which they filmed. The bubble they had there. Maybe she’s the foolish one for thinking it would be anything different or more. He’s a fucking Oscar winner and she’s still more or less a nobody. She’s gotten the impression he doesn’t actually give a shit about any of that, but maybe that wasn’t totally real, either. 

She’s not going to make herself crazy over one kiss. She’s never done that for any other guy and she’s not going to do it for this one.


	3. Chapter 3

He doesn’t tell anyone about kissing Allie until he’s sitting on Dom’s back patio while the guy’s kids play in the pool and there’s a glass of honest to god homemade lemonade in his hand. Because he’s been agonizing about it for a fucking week at this point. He just landed yesterday and he and Dom had already had plans, but Harry didn’t exactly realize how much he needed this until he pulled into the driveway and his friend was standing there, barefoot on the concrete slabs, with his arms already open for a hug before Harry’d even put the car in park. 

“So you fuckin’ kissed her,” Dom says, and Harry laughs a little at the curse, though these kids aren’t paying them one bit of attention. “Finally.”

“I mean,” Harry starts, then laughs and shakes his head, “is it finally, or is it what the fuck was I thinking?”

Dom sips his lemonade, shakes his head. “You wanted to do it so you did it.”

Harry laughs harder, cuts Dom a look. “Don’t have a great track record with acting on impulses, Dom.” Dom chuckles, nods. “I know it’s a bad idea. I knew it was. But I just...Selfishly, I didn’t want her to leave without knowing what it was like to kiss her.”

“That’s a real thing. What did she say?” Harry cringes, looks away. He doesn’t want to say the words out loud. That he doesn't know what Allie said because he hasn’t spoken to her. “Dude.”

“I...I didn’t know what the fuck to say. You know what it’s like on a set. But after...She lives in New York. I live here.” 

Dom rolls his eyes like this is the dumbest fucking thing he’s ever heard, which Harry doesn’t appreciate. But he also wants to know more of what Dom’s thinking. 

He’s pretty sure he already knows.

“It’s too bad you both don’t have money for flights, and don’t both have lots of reason to be bi-coastal.” Dom turns a little in his seat. He’s wearing board shorts and nothing else. The guy’s ripped and Harry’s absolutely thinking about that kind of shit and not on bracing himself for what comes next. “Look, when Mia and I first started dating, she was filming in Georgia half the fucking year. We made it work.”

“I’m…” Harry feels like the walls are closing in a little. “I don’t think I’m trying to date her.”

Dom looks genuinely confused. Harry wonders if the way he’s talked about her is...If he shouldn’t have talked about her as much as he did. If he made his attraction and fondness for her feel like something more than it was. Is. 

Or, honestly, if all of that is bullshit and he’s just running from it because he doesn’t know how to deal with it at all.

“Why not?”

Harry shrugs. “Neither of us likes to date in the industry. Last time I dated an actor I ended up heartbroken and on a six month bender. I can’t...Just because I think she’s pretty and funny and talented doesn’t mean we should start a relationship.”

“I think that’s bullshit,” Dom says, then sits back in his seat and tips his face towards the sun. “You’re downplaying what you feel about her.”

“I hardly know her, is what I’m saying.” 

He sounds a little shitty about it, because that’s how he’s feeling, honestly. It’s fucked that Dom or anyone else would like, wax poetic about how he feels about her when even Harry doesn’t have an answer for that. Is he downplaying it? He honestly doesn’t know. It’s true what he said - sets are like weird little bubbles. He doesn’t know what she’s like outside of that. He never even saw her in her hotel room, so he sure as hell has no idea what she’s like when she’s _off_ , you know? Their time spent together was in trailers or on sets and soundstages, and a few times when everyone was off the clock. But that doesn’t change the power dynamic that existed between them because they were on this project. And Harry’s not stupid enough to think she wasn’t super aware of that, too. Does he actually think she ever fully let her guard down or forgot that they were director and actor respectively? Absolutely not. 

“Then you shouldn’t have kissed her,” Dom says. 

It’s direct and real and true and Harry was sort of hoping this isn’t where they’d end up, but here they are. 

He should text her. But it’s been a week, and he doesn’t know what to say, and she hasn’t tried to contact him again and didn’t reply when he thanked her. And if he knows her at all - and he honestly thinks he does know bits and pieces and it wasn’t all just fake or heightened by their shared experience - he’s sure enough time has passed that she’s probably mad about it and if he tries to reach out, she’s going to have a bit of attitude with him. He doesn’t even blame her, he just...Maybe it’s better this way. 

Yeah. Yeah, it’s better this way. They got to know each other on set, and he kissed her goodbye, and they can leave it at that. 

He doesn’t feel particularly _good_ about this decision, but he also thinks that’s what he gets for this stupid thing he’s done. And even now, knowing all this, he still doesn’t think he regrets it or that he’d take it back if he could. Maybe that makes him selfish. Probably it does. But he liked kissing her. It felt like the right thing to do in the moment. And when he said he had to, and what he just told Dom, is absolutely true. He sort of needed to know what it was like. He doesn’t want to apologize for what he wants. But that’s always a hard thing to reconcile with his recovery and so much of his time being spent very much _not_ just doing what he wants. 

He hasn’t thought this much about a fucking kiss since he was like, 15.

… … …

Being back in her own place is exactly what she needs. Her own bed, and the ability to cook her own food even though she’s not much of a chef, and all her toiletries and makeup exactly where she wants them. She polishes her nails for the first time in months since she wasn’t allowed to during filming. She does a sheet mask and burns candles and listens to sad music in dim lighting and sort of really loves being left the fuck _alone_.

She’s always needed time by herself to recharge, and while she was sort of able to make her hotel room and trailer feel a little like home, it definitely wasn’t the same on the set of this movie as it was on the show. On the show, she had her own condo she rented from the time they were picked up after the first nine episodes. She had a home. 

She’s annoyed at how quickly Elaine, and her publicist, and even Becca, once, suggest that maybe L.A. should be on her radar. Like, a move, she means. She isn’t really interested in moving to the west coast. At least not yet. God, she’s been in one movie so far, and it hasn’t even been released yet. It’d be pretty fucking presumptuous to pick up her whole life, wouldn’t it? Becca’s telling her she’s crazy, that most people move to L.A. with like, half a dream and $600. Allie’s...She’s got much more than that. It’s not like she didn’t make more money than she needed on the show, or like she isn’t still making money from it. She has money. She’s getting scripts. She’s booked a small part in an Amazon thing that’ll start shooting next month. She just…

She likes New York. She likes being here, and that there are seasons, and that she has her place, and that she can more or less move around without people bugging her because New Yorkers have this way about them like celebrities are really no big deal. Maybe that’ll change once people see her in more things, but she’s fine for now. And she doesn’t see her parents multiple times a month or anything, but the idea of being across the country and away from them is a difficult one to picture. 

Her publicist teases some outlets that she’s maybe thinking of moving, and the only reason Allie okays it is because it’s literally harmless and anyone who actually cares will just tweet about it a little and then it’ll go away. 

She goes to the premiere of Charlize’s new movie, this action thing that Charlize naturally looks fucking badass in. They meet up on the red carpet and there are photos of them together, Charlize in an all black tuxedo with no shirt underneath, and Allie in a white mini dress and these gold heels she fell in love with when her stylist showed her. Charlize is towering over her and some of the photos are of Charlize with both hands on Allie’s shoulders, her knees bent a little as she leans back and looks at her. 

Allie thinks she looks good in the photos. She posts a few to her stories and makes a self-deprecating joke about how smitten she looks at Charlize. Her fans go sort of insane, either saying looking at Charlize like that is a whole mood, or that’s how people look at Allie, too. 

In the photo she posts to her Instagram proper, it’s just her in her apartment getting ready, her makeup and hair done and her dress on. She’s sort of pouting lightly, her dark lipstick popping on camera. 

Harry likes the photo. Allie sighs and shows Becca, and Becca - literally the only person she’s told about the kiss - says, “Fuck that guy,” and hands Allie her tea. 

Allie’s mind wanders a little at the thought. Well, that thought in a different context. Becca sees right through her, tells her to stop. Allie nods because Becca is right to remind her.

Grizz is in town a while, so they hang out and end up doing this content piece for Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel where they’re put in a white room with two privacy screens and five racks of clothing for each of them and have to pick out each others’ outfits. She knows the studio set this up and it’s meant to remind everyone they’re costars in an upcoming movie, to show their friendship and have people talking about their chemistry way before the thing even comes out. 

But whatever. It’s fucking fun. Grizz puts her in some truly wild outfits, and she dresses him to the nines in a navy tux with a floral pocket square. He gets her in this black gown with a lace bodice. She puts him head to toe in Adidas, and he puts her in a crop top and Lululemon pants and goes off about how this is actually just how she dresses when she’s not working. They spend most of the day laughing with each other and it’s kind of the most fun she’s ever had doing press.

When they’re hanging out at her place drinking cheap beer and eating takeout, he’s texting someone and she sees that it’s Harry and she tries really hard not to be offended that Harry’s keeping up a relationship with Grizz, but not her. Like, here she’d convinced herself he just didn’t want to stay in touch with people from set after they’d left. But clearly it’s not that. And what the fuck? She thinks she and Harry were closer than he and Grizz at the end there. But god, maybe that’s the whole problem, right?

She tucks her hair behind her ear and Grizz must know her even better than she thought, because he asks her what’s wrong. 

“You and Harry are close?” she asks, and he furrows his brow like he’s confused. 

“You’re not?” She hesitates, then just shakes her head, wondering why he would’ve just assumed she and Harry would have continued their friendship. Grizz turns more towards her. “Really?” 

The laugh she lets out is bitter, which isn’t really fair. “Really.”

“That’s...surprising. You two were so friendly.”

She feels her jaw twitch. “Yeah. I mean, sure.” He seems to think he realizes something, then, tilts his head a little like he wants to know if he’s right. She isn’t going to go there. Especially not if he and Harry are still friends. It’d be pretty fucked up to talk about them and put that on Grizz. “We haven’t really spoken since I wrapped.”

“Huh.”

She has no idea how to respond to that, honestly. 

But then he holds his phone up, switches his camera so it’s front facing, and leans in next to her. He makes a goofy face, and his hair is falling in his eyes, and Allie tries to get him to stop this, because it’s stupid. But he digs his fingers into her ribs where she’s ticklish and she ends up laughing and falling against him, and he snaps a few photos.

The one he sends to Harry, she’s laughing and her eyes are closed and she looks really fucking happy. 

Harry just reacts with the two exclamation points, and Allie knows what that means. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, but he doesn’t want to leave it unacknowledged. 

She and Grizz put their focus back on this show they’re bingeing, and he airdrops her the photo he took. She considers posting it, but sort of likes the idea that it’s just her, and him, and Harry that know about it.

She should stop trying to keep herself connected to Harry, but maybe she just likes secrets and that’s all this is.

… … …

He really very nearly fucks everything up. Everything. 

He drives out to Malibu because he wants to sit on the beach, which is a pretty rare impulse he has. It’s just that it’s late in fall and it’s about to be colder. Like, he grew up in the northeast, so it’s not like he thinks L.A. winters are actually anything to complain about at all. But his favourite part of living here is that it’s really hot and sunny, and it’s about to be less of that, and it’s already cold enough at night that he needs a jacket. 

It’s windy as fuck when he gets out of his car, and when he sits down on the sand there are a few people around jogging, or whatever, as they like to do out here. 

Harry sticks his hands into his pockets, and his fingers bump against something and he knows what it is immediately. He fucking...he knows what it is. He doesn’t have to look. But he pulls the little plastic bag out and sees enough coke for a couple lines. He obviously hasn’t worn this jacket in ages, and when his mom and sister came out here to help his assistant rid the house of absolutely any substance they could find, they obviously didn’t check every goddamn pocket and shouldn’t have had to. This isn’t their fault. 

Harry’s...he hates how tempted he is, how quickly it hits. Literally he could do this right now and no one would have to know. But he’s in fucking Malibu and he’s gotta drive home. And later, he’ll think about how this is progress in itself because two years ago he wouldn’t have fucking cared about that. He would’ve wanted the high and it wouldn’t have mattered where he was or what he was supposed to be doing or about his own safety - or anyone’s safety - whatsoever.

His hand is shaking, and if he thinks about it hard enough, he knows what’ll happen if he does this. And god, coke isn’t even his favourite, but it’s _something_ , and it’s not like he was ever fucking picky, was he? But if he does this - honestly, if he doesn’t get rid of it - it erases everything. He’ll prove everyone who thinks he’s a fuckup right. All those people who just think he’s a hot head and an entitled brat who got everything he has because he started miles ahead of everyone else. 

But that’s not true and he knows it and he knows he’s got to continue working his ass off to show he’s not as bad as his worst mistakes. He doesn’t want to be a fucking failure. He’s writing another screenplay, and he’s been asked to direct a new Sorkin pilot, and he has a project in development to start in the spring, shooting in Europe with Viola Davis and Dev Patel. 

He’s clear-headed enough to know he can’t fuck all that up. 

He stands, closes his hand into a fist around the bag, and walks back towards his car. He tosses the bag into the trash can on the way by and counts his breathing in time with his steps as he walks. When he gets into his car, he wraps both hands around the wheel and grips it hard before he even turns the engine on. He should call his sponsor. He will. He just needs like, a couple minutes so he doesn’t feel like he’s gonna throw up.

It feels weird in his next few meetings when he talks about this and gets praise. Like, objectively he knows it’s a big deal, but so many fucking people go their whole lives not being tempted by this shit. It feels like a basic thing, but just because his brain’s wired to want too much of everything that makes him feel good, he gets a pat on the back for his strength or courage or whatever. 

Working with Sorkin is a dream, which is what he tells every media outlet who asks. The show stars Julianna Margulies and Thomas Sadoski, who are both absolute pros. The experience is incredible, and people are making a big deal about it since it’s the first thing he’s ever done for TV, and it’s Sorkin’s first TV project since The Newsroom. Someone takes a picture of him on set, from behind as he’s got a headset around his neck and a monitor in front of him, camera next to him and the set all lit. It’s a good photo. He posts it to Instagram. The first thing he’s posted since that one Allie took of him.

She comments _💙 Proud of you_ and Harry stares at it too long.

… … ...

Allie meets Jason at a party in Brooklyn in February after she’s wrapped a small role in this period piece that shot upstate in January. He’s a sales rep for a craft brewery and apparently wasn’t actually invited to this party and doesn’t have anything to do with anyone. He was just at the bar talking to the owner when everyone arrived and no one asked him to leave. Allie thinks that’s so fucking funny she spends most of her night talking to him. 

He’s super hot, and he’s passionate about craft beer and eventually wants to get into brewing but apparently it’s really competitive. He says she looks familiar, and then laughs when she says she’s an actor. He asks what she’s been in, and as she lists things off, he says, “Nope,” and, “Never seen it,” and, “I think my mom liked that, but...yeah, no.” It’s honestly refreshing. She’s really into the fact he seems like a truly regular guy but doesn’t actually look like one. God, he’s hot. She likes the way she has to tilt her head back a bit to see him because he’s so tall. She likes the way he’s just wearing a black tee shirt and jeans and crisp Stan Smiths. 

When she sets her empty beer glass on the bar and looks up at him and asks, “You wanna get out of here?” he gives her a look so sexy she can barely stand it.

She doesn’t honestly think they’ll start _dating_ , even though he keys his number into her phone before he leaves in the morning. But he messages her a week later and asks if she wants to grab a drink, and she goes. They don’t even sleep together then, just talk for a couple hours and he puts her in a cab and in a couple ways, leaves her wanting more. After that, they just sort of...fall into it. He’s not joking when he asks if he should schedule things through her or Becca, and she’s not joking when she says both. He doesn’t seem bothered; seems to just go with it. When she asks him about it, he just shrugs and says, “Is it weird that I wanna make sure I’m doing what you need?”

And like. Fuck, right?

The studio sends over the trailer for the movie when it’s done. Well, the first trailer. She knows the film isn’t fully edited yet. It’s set for a winter release, without even a set date. But because it’s Harry and it’s Grizz, they want to get all the buzz they can.

Allie thinks it looks fucking beautiful. She cries. She can’t show anyone but Becca, because Becca’s also signed an NDA, obviously. They hold hands and cry and laugh at each other for doing it. But it’s definitely going to be the first thing like this she’s in that people see, and it still feels like a big fucking deal, even though she’s about to go play Connie Britton’s daughter in a movie filming in Santa Fe in a few weeks. 

She texts Harry with three exclamation points and _’Oh my god’_ and he replies and says it’s all coming together. It doesn’t make for a great conversation starter, so she just leaves it at that. It’s insane to her that they got so close on set and now...God, their last messages are right above this. It’s been literally months and they haven’t spoken at all. It’s fine. Maybe she’s just feeling nostalgic. 

Jason picks her up to go to brunch. They’re photographed together and he’s called a ‘mystery man’ which he thinks is hilarious and is sort of into, and Allie finds that endearing.

They look good in the photos. His arm is draped over her shoulder, and she’s tucked in against his side, smiling at something he’s saying. He looks hot, too, in his Yankees hat and blue and white baseball tee stretched across his chest. 

It’s a stupid thought she has, but she knows Harry will see these, and she wonders what he’ll think. As if that matters whatsoever or changes anything. 

Jason lies on her bed in his joggers and grey tee shirt as she packs for Santa Fe. He looks so good it’s distracting her and he knows it. He’s growing this sort of light beard that really works on him and she’s told him as much. Her suitcase is there and she’s tossing items in. Becca’s usually here for this part, and it feels a little weird that she’s not, but Allie doesn’t mind it, either. 

“I’m gonna miss you,” he says as she’s standing at her closet looking for a particular jacket she swears should be in here, and she looks at him over her shoulder. He’s not looking at her, just playing with his phone, flipping it over and over on the bed. 

“Yeah?” she asks, then turns fully and he gives her this little grin that makes her want to join him, so she does. “What’ll you do without me?”

She leans against him, rests her hand on the mattress on the other side of him, her wrist grazing his ribs. He seems to be thinking about his answer. 

“I just said,” he tells her, smirks a little and then puts both hands on her waist and moves them easily, rolls so she’s beneath him. “Miss you.”

She lets him kiss her, lets him completely distract her, and then when he leaves he seems pretty reluctant to go. She’s up too late finishing packing because her flight is early and she can’t do this in the morning. Becca comes over at 5:45am, meets her, and comments that Allie looks like shit as soon as they’re in the car. Whatever. Worth it.

Santa Fe is an interesting place. Becca loves it, says the weather and the air are good for her skin. They have a little two bedroom house rented because they’re shooting outside the city and it’s easier this way, apparently. Connie is incredible. Like, Allie wonders - out loud, embarrassingly - how it is she keeps getting to work with such amazing women. Connie just laughs and hugs her and calls her darling. Allie feels a little weird about playing a 19 year old, but that’s not new. It’s just been a few years since she played so much younger than herself and when they do her makeup on day one she sort of can’t stop looking at herself. It’s like a time machine, or something. This particular contouring makes her look like she’s got a little bit of her baby pudge back. They also straighten her hair, which she sort of hates but understands in the context of the movie and making her look more like Connie Britton’s daughter.

When she has a three day break in her schedule, she goes to L.A. for meetings and for a little press and a photo shoot. She’s been named as ‘one to watch’, which feels sort of dumb since she’s been working for years already. And she definitely knows her start in films - and the fact that she’s got multiple projects in post-production and this one she’s currently filming - is a big deal.

Grizz is out of town shooting in British Columbia. He texted her a photo of this vineyard he’s filming at. It’s a movie about some renowned sommelier, which sounds a little dry to her, but he swears it’s good and she believes him. 

He tells her she should reach out to Harry, that he just got back from filming in Hungary. She read about that. 

She isn’t going to call him. She has no intentions of calling him. 

She only does it when she’s exhausted and back at the hotel at the end of the night. Becca’s turned in after reminding her what time her first interview is tomorrow. Allie’s all alone in a city she’s come to learn she just doesn’t really like, and she’s not tired, and she just…

She misses him. Despite everything that’s happened since, and how long it’s been, and not even really knowing if anything between them was real.

He answers after two rings. “Allie.”

He says her name a little like he can’t believe she’s calling. 

“Hey,” she breathes, then recovers. “I’m bored and in L.A. Any suggestions?”

He lets out a little laugh. She wonders where he is and what he’s doing. “I’m jet lagged and starving. In-N-Out?”

She wasn’t really expecting that they’d do something now, but she gets a little rush from the thought of it. 

Allie has him pick a location, then says she’ll get an Uber. He says he can just pick her up, and she just...She says yes before thinking. 

She didn’t bring a lot with her on this three day trip; just a few outfits for interviews and the current thing she has on, which is denim shorts and a black tee shirt from Old Navy that literally cost $5, and her Air Force Ones. She can’t very well use one of her other outfits for this, and she knows Harry’s seen her in all manner of ridiculous shit like she used to show up to set in. 

When he pulls up, she sees him smiling and absolutely looking her up and down before he’s even come to a stop. She gets in, shuts the door, and wants to hug him, so she leans across the console and wraps her arms around him. He hugs her back, which is nice. She didn’t really give him much of a choice, honestly. But still. It’s their second hug ever, and the first ended with him kissing her. She’s gotta let that go. It’s been literally months and she has a boyfriend. She shouldn’t even be thinking about it. It couldn’t matter less. 

“I see you dressed up,” he teases, and she knows he’s teasing because of the way his lips are ticked up at the corner as he pulls out of the hotel’s driveway. 

“I’m going for California girl. Or alternatively, came-out-here-for-my-big-break-but-haven’t-made-it-yet. Have I missed the mark?”

“No, it’s spot on.” He leans his elbow on the console, his left hand on the wheel, and shifts his eyes towards her as they drive towards their destination. “You’ve been busy.”

“Says you,” she counters. He looks almost bashful. “How was it? I mean, Viola Davis. God.”

“Yeah, it was…” He pauses, shifts a little away from her as he thinks. “It was pretty amazing. Super rewarding.” Allie just nods. This feels like stupid small talk and she doesn’t really like it at all. “You have a boyfriend.”

Oh. Fuck. That’s...She doesn’t really like the way he’s said that. But when she thinks about it for a second, she realizes there’s no way he could've said the words that didn’t feel sort of awful. 

So she musters as much confidence as she can and says, “Yeah,” and smiles thinking of Jason because she _is_ happy with him. This shit with Harry just feels heavy. Jason’s got nothing to do with that. “Yeah, everything’s coming up Allie.” He breathes a little laugh, and she just...Maybe this was a bad idea. “How are you, Harry?”

“I’m good,” he says genuinely, and she likes that. It makes her think maybe they’ll settle into the way they used to be. “I’ve got tons of stuff in the works. I um...I wrote another screenplay.”

Allie smiles, turns more towards him. “Really? What’s it about?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t tell you.” He gives her a pretty meaningful look, and she grins and shakes her head. She knows what this means. Someone’s bought it and he’s literally not allowed to talk about it. “But it’s good.”

“I mean…” She stops herself, but then thinks he deserves to hear it. “Everything you do is good.” He smiles full on, though he’s not looking at her. “I think I’ll be chasing the feeling of working on that project for the rest of my career.”

A silence stretches out between them. She maybe shouldn’t have said that, though she really does think it’s true. She loved every second of that project. Even the hard ones. And much of that has to do with him, in hindsight. Not just that the writing was so beautiful, but his approach, and his preparation, and the way he worked with her to make her be better. 

But it’s a heavy thing to have put out there, and it’s petty, really, but part of her feels like she shouldn’t have given him the satisfaction. But that makes her feel like she’s playing a game, and she’s too mature for that. 

“What’re you doing now?” he asks, and then, “Why are you in L.A.?”

“Santa Fe, actually. Filming.” He nods. He’s probably heard about the thing she’s in. “I’m in L.A. against my will for the less fun parts of this job.”

He lets out a laugh, and she sees the sign for In-N-Out. “Well, if you’re being held hostage, at least you can have a good burger and fries.”

She shakes her head. “Fries and a milkshake.”

“You got it,” he tells her, steers his fancy car into the parking lot and throws it into park. 

Harry orders and they find a table, and there’re a couple people in here who recognize them. Allie’s gotten a lot more used to people taking her photo, and a hell of a lot more used to things being posted online and being talked about. But it’ll be different with Harry, anyway, because people know she’s got a boyfriend, but also people know she and Harry are...not strangers. She doesn’t want to say they’re friends. Maybe they’re not, or maybe they are. It doesn’t matter. The point is, they’ve worked together and everyone knows it, and that’s what’ll come up when these pics are out there. Their publicists and the studio will probably love it. 

Harry doesn’t pay anyone any mind. He just returns with a tray of food and sits across from her, sliding into his seat and laughing when she doesn’t even wait til he’s properly seated before taking her shake off the tray. 

“I always forget how much you can eat.”

“Excuse me!” she laughs, but then tosses a fry into her mouth, which just makes him look smug like she’s proving his point. 

“In reviewing the budget, I think you put us in the hole like, a few thousand in chocolate croissants alone.”

Allie sips her milkshake and squints at him like she doesn’t appreciate this joke. “Maybe if they weren’t so fucking small, I wouldn’t have had to eat so many.” Harry lets out a laugh so bright it makes her freeze and sit there looking at him. God, he’s attractive. 

“Cute,” he says, and swipes some fries through his ketchup. “How’s your life in New York, Allie?” 

It sounds so earnest and genuine that it makes her really want to answer truthfully. He’s not asking to make small talk or fill silence, he seems to really want to know. And it’s not like they didn’t ever discuss this when they spent all that time together. But it’s different now. It feels less like they’re gathering baseline information about each other, and more like he wants to know about her _now_. And she really doesn’t have any problem telling him. She says she’s in the same apartment, which makes him laugh before she even explains why. It’s silly. She doesn’t even remember telling him anything about it, but apparently she did. He tells her he’s heard this thing about her neighbourhood, and she definitely hasn’t mentioned the area in which she lives today, so she must have before. She really doesn’t want to think there’s something sweet about the fact that Harry’s remembered all these random little facts about her even after not speaking for so long.

They talk about her projects and she asks how the film is coming along. He’s a little cryptic about it, which she wants to find annoying, but they’re also in public and she definitely knows that at least a couple people have taken videos of them as they’ve been sitting here. She wants to know about his house, so he tells her it’s big and he’s thinking of moving to someplace that feels more homey. She doesn’t know what that means. 

She says, “You should move to New York.” 

Harry leans his forearm on the table, looks at her with such a hot expression on his face it almost makes her mad. “Why’s that?”

She shrugs. “Because it’s obviously superior?”

He laughs, leans back in his chair and sips his shake. She almost wonders if he was hoping for a different answer.

Allie smiles and reaches for her shake, too, then gets up, pulls her phone from her pocket and takes the seat next to him. He’s laughing, seems to have realized what she’s doing before she even opens the camera. She tilts her phone and he makes a sound like he doesn’t approve, but she doesn’t care. He looks totally goofy sipping from his straw, but she sort of really loves this stupid picture. She doesn’t go back to her side of the table, either. 

“I’m totally posting this,” she says, and then looks over at him, because if he says no or looks like he doesn’t want her to, she won’t. But he doesn’t seem bothered, so she opens Instagram and adds it to her story without a caption, which is rare for her, honestly, and then she sees how late it is. “I should get you to take me back.”

“Yeah?” he asks, definitely trying to sound like he’s not disappointed. She likes that a little too much, too. “Early day?”

“Mhm, and we’re not all on Budapest time.”

He laughs a little and they get up, he tosses their trash, and they head back to the car. It’s still hot out and Harry’s wearing this stupid buttondown shirt, playing with his keys, and she just…

She can have a boyfriend and still think Harry’s maybe one of the most attractive people she’s ever laid eyes on. That’s fine. 

He slides his hand along her shoulders when he pulls up to the hotel and puts his car in park. Allie turns and they hug again, and his hand moves up so his thumb’s brushing the nape of her neck. It’s insane to her that it’s the first time she’s thought about that kiss since he first pulled up. He takes a breath and pulls away, so she does, too, tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles over at him. 

“It was really good to see you,” she tells him, and he nods, looks like he has something to say but is holding back.

But he just says, “You too,” and she just…

She leans over and kisses his cheek, sees the almost shy look on his face as she pulls away. 

They don’t say they’ll keep in touch or see each other soon. She figures maybe they won’t. She has a lot of feelings about that, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe she should just message him sometime when she has something to say, and see what happens.

(Two weeks later when she’s eating a chocolate croissant at craft services, she snaps a photo and sends it to him. He replies _’Good to know it’s not just my films you’re bankrupting’_ and Becca asks what she’s smiling at. She doesn’t know why she lies and says it’s nothing.)

… … …

It takes him a solid four days to stop kicking himself for not asking if he could come up to her room. 

Which is fucking stupid. She’s got a boyfriend and he knows her well enough - he thinks he knows her well enough - to know she isn’t the cheating type. She’s too good a person to hurt someone like that. At least he thinks so. 

He’s not. He knows it’d be awful to do to this guy whose name he doesn’t even know. And he knows it’d be a little awful to do to her, too, because he knows she’d agonize about it. But he lets himself sit in his selfishness for a little, thinking he should’ve just fucking gone for it because it’s what he wanted. Wants.

At the end of the four days, he comes to the conclusion that it’s for the best and moves on. He had his chance months ago when they were close and there was definitely something simmering between them, and he didn’t take it. He can’t just pretend now like everything’s the same. She’s clearly moved on. He hasn’t been fucking pining over her all this time, or anything, and he’s not going to pretend he has. It’s not like he’s been celibate or hasn’t dated a few people. 

Allie’s just gorgeous, and he likes her, likes how it feels when they’re together, and it can be just that. She doesn’t owe him a thing. How he feels doesn’t require any real action on her part. 

They start this thing where they message random shit back and forth. She goes to some premier and meets up with Grizz on the red carpet, and she sends him this video where they’re saying hi to him as a bunch of flashes go off. He sees the official photos later, Grizz’s hand on her waist over her shiny pink dress, her hair pulled back loosely away from her face. Every time they’re seen in public together, the movie is brought up which he knows means good things the closer they get to a release date. 

His next screenplay officially goes into pre-production. It’s a little lighter than the last. Different threads and more based on a relationship. Sort of a modern love tale following these two people who can’t seem to stay away from each other. They’ve cast Aubrey Plaza, which he’s sort of thrilled about, honestly. And they’d booked Liam Hemsworth, but he had to back out so they’re recasting, which is fine. 

He signs on to back a project Dom is trying to get off the ground. Harry doesn’t have a ton of producing credits, but he knows how it goes and he believes in his friend and this fucking hilarious buddy comedy he’s trying to get made. Harry doesn’t mind putting some money and his name behind it. No one seems to bother questioning how they know each other, and it doesn’t matter anyway.

He’s interviewed for Rolling Stone, and they talk extensively about the project, his first writer/director credit, and he seriously agonized for days on how much he wanted to sing her praises in the interview, but then the woman asks, “And what was it like working with Allie Pressman?” and he just…

Whatever. He’s honest. 

Allie sends him a screenshot of one of his quotes when it comes out. The part where he’s said, _”Honestly, I wasn’t going to hire her. I didn’t want the baggage of her having worked on that show following us around. But then she sort of blew me away in our first meeting, and then fuck. When we actually started the work, you just really start to see how_ good _she is. So poised, so prepared. And when you put the camera on her, it’s like she just knows exactly what to do._ ” 

It’s not even the nicest thing he said. 

(She left out the part right after this, where he’d said, _”Plus, that_ face _.”_ Which Rolling Stone definitely didn’t have to make its own paragraph, but they did that anyway.)

She calls him when he starts typing back. He wonders if she’d been waiting, watching to see if he’d respond. 

“Harry, oh my god.” He laughs a little. He hasn’t actually heard her voice like this since that night in his car. It’s nice. “Couldn’t you have warned me? What the fuck? This is insane.”

“I didn’t think they’d print it like some kind of love letter,” he says as a joke, and she laughs although it feels heavy. Too heavy. Too close to something that makes them address the fact that he kissed her. “Whatever. It’s a four page article and you’re stuck on a paragraph?” 

“Typical. I only read the parts about me.” He laughs, because he can tell she’s joking. “Thank you. I really don’t know what to say.” 

He shrugs his shoulder, even though she can’t see him. “Just being honest.” He sits back on the chair in his living room, grins a little. “What’re you gonna say when people ask you about me?”

She lets out a laugh he loves the sound of. “I dunno. I’ll have to make something up.” He lets out sort of a snort and wonders where she even is. “Anything in particular you want me to stay away from?”

“Nah. Just tell the truth,” he tells her. “The worst shit people can say about me is probably already out there.”

She pauses, and then lets out a breath. “I don’t have anything bad to say about you, Harry,” she says, way too softly, way too gently. Like she really wants him to know she means it. Honestly, it makes him feel a lot of shit he’s been actively trying to tamp down. “I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen how great I think you are.”

He grins. “Wanna tell me?”

“No. It’ll go to your head.” 

Harry laughs, knowing she’s keeping this running joke going. He remembers being on set with her, her pulling up some photos someone took of him and posted to Instagram, and then the Toronto Star picking up the story and running with it, talking about how brilliant he was. He’d let her make a big thing of it, and then just smiled and said he wasn’t hearing anything new that he didn’t already know about himself anyway. She’d groaned and used her entire body to react, this big sweeping gesture way too early in the morning as she talked about his ego, and whatever. Really, he’d just liked the way all those things they were writing about him sounded when she was the one saying them. 

“What’re you up to?” he asks, the kind of casual chatting he actually likes with her.

“Waiting for Jason,” she tells him, and yeah, he takes it back. He doesn’t like this. 

He shouldn’t be jealous of a random fucking guy he’s never met, but he is. He is, because he blew his shot and he can’t even talk to her about it. Not now. Not when she’s obviously trying to make something work with someone else. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhm. We’re going to this thing for his work. I’m nervous.”

Harry shouldn’t laugh, but like, what does she have to be nervous about? He knows Jason works in beverages, or something normal like that, and probably works with a bunch of people similarly _not famous_ , like him. Allie’s a beautiful celebrity and there’s no reason for anyone not to be nice to her unless they dislike famous people on principle. In which case, fuck ‘em. 

“Why?” he chuckles. 

She gets all quiet. “I’ve never met any of his coworkers. I want them to like me.”

Harry smiles to himself, can practically picture the look on her face, how it gets when she’s all pensive like that. “They’ll like you.”

“You think so?”

Yeah, now she’s just fishing for compliments. 

“Definitely,” he tells her, way too softly. She doesn’t say anything. “How could they not?”

“Mm.” There’s another pause, and then, “I guess if they’re unsure I can just show them this Rolling Stone thing.”

“Oh, my god,” Harry laughs. “Stop.”

She lets out this quiet sound, almost a hum, but not quite there. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he says, and she scoffs like she doesn’t believe him. “Sitting in my living room, drinking Perrier and talking to you.” 

“Wow, talk about a perfect evening.” Harry smiles at her stupid joke, wishes she were here. “You’re really not working?”

“I’m trying not to be as much of a workaholic,” he says, and she lets out another sound, sort of communicating that she’ll believe it when she sees it. “Seriously. I’m trying to find more balance.”

“How’s that going for you?” she asks, all genuine.

“I mean...I’m having to force myself to do things that aren’t work. I have a whole reading list. I’m thinking of cooking my way through this cookbook my mom gave me.”

“Oh, my god. I think about that pasta you made like, daily.” 

She laughs, and Harry just...If he thinks about it enough he can picture...No. No, let him stop twisting things into some imaginary future that has no basis in reality. But he just remembers that night, and their flirting, and how close she’d gotten to him and how much he loved the look of her in the kitchen while he worked. 

“Yeah? You’ll have to come over next time you’re in L.A. I didn’t even make you my specialty.”

Allie pauses, and then says, “This must be how you get all the girls, hm? Charm and skills in the kitchen.”

There’s a comment right on the tip of his tongue about really his skills in the bedroom sealing the deal, but he isn’t going to go there.

“Yeah, that’s all it takes,” he jokes, and then Allie’s breathing in his ear all soft. And like, sure she has a boyfriend, but he still thinks he should make a distinction for her here. “Despite what you may hear or think, I don’t have a roster of women coming around.”

“Oh, please.” He can almost picture her shaking her head at him, or something. “You could if you wanted to.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t.”

It’s important. It’s important that she knows this. 

And Allie laughs at the way he’s said that, and then he hears a door close on her end of the line, and the fairly distinct sound of someone kissing her. 

She sounds quiet, maybe embarrassed when she says, “I have to go. But this was nice.”

Harry smiles, really liking the fact that she doesn’t seem to be hiding the fact they’ve been talking. That she isn’t keeping this from her boyfriend. 

“Yeah,” he agrees easily. “We should talk more often. I like hearing your voice.”

It’s probably too far, but Allie just laughs softly in his ear, probably about how bold he’s being when he clearly knows she’s no longer alone, and knows who’s there with her. 

“I’d like that, too. Bye, Harry.”

“Bye, Allie.”

He hangs up first, takes a deep breath. He wonders if he’ll ever stop wondering if they could’ve been something more if he’d said something after kissing her. If he hadn’t left it the way he did. 

She posts a photo of her manicured fingers wrapped around a beer glass with a brand’s name on the side, and he assumes that’s Jason’s company and she’s promoting, or whatever. He wants to text her, joking that he hopes she got paid for the promo, but when he types it out, it looks like something really easy to misinterpret and he doesn’t want her to think he’s being an asshole. 

And anyway, his publicist calls him to give him some rundown on how the Rolling Stone thing is performing and all that shit that Harry doesn’t actually care about but should probably listen to. 

The next day, he makes poached eggs and this incredible sauce over English muffins for breakfast, takes a photo with the cookbook page in the background. He sends the picture to Allie with _’Recipe #1’_ , and she replies with the heart eyes emoji. 

Harry smiles to himself and reaches for his cutlery.

… … ...

There’s a break in her schedule. A proper break. She has things lined up, but built in an entire month to enjoy summer in the city before TIFF and then immediately flying to Prague to film this sort of ‘lovers on the run’ thing with Noah Centineo. 

She honestly loves New York when it’s hot out. Jason laughs at her - actually, Jason and Becca both laugh at her. They say it stinks and people are more rude and the humidity is nearly unbearable. And sure, all those things are true, but there’s just a _vibe_. Like, crop tops and thin dresses and air conditioners humming in every building you walk past. Cold beer on rooftops. And now that she’s got a little more access just because her star is rising, she’s invited to all kinds of amazing events. She does a photoshoot on the Brooklyn Bridge wearing the most incredible clothes she’s ever had on. She tans with Jason in the little green space near his building. They sip boba and he scrolls through whatever social media on his phone as she reads. 

She rents a house in the Hamptons for five days, invites Becca, Jason, Luke and Helena to come with her. Sam comes in from Boston, and Grizz ends up being in town and crashes. Really. He’s not invited, he just shows up with an expensive duffel over his shoulder and laughs when she squeals as soon as she’s opened the door. 

It’s five days of sun and swimming and food they cook and some they pick up from town. There’s one day they rent a boat with a nice captain and Sam and Becca talk about the perks of having friends with money. Jason shifts in his seat, chuckles, and puts his arm around Allie as her hair whips around in the wind. She doesn’t think much of it. No, that’s not true. Something about the gesture feels odd to her, but she ignores it. 

Allie thinks she sees something blooming between Grizz and Sam, but when she asks Grizz about it early in the morning, when they’re both awake and drinking coffee on the dock, he tries to deny it. 

“I’m not blind, but okay,” she says, and Grizz just narrows his eyes and then shakes his head after a moment like he’s holding something back. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says, and looks to his feet. He sits down, his legs dangling off the wood, and Allie takes a place next to him. Everyone’s telling her to invest in real estate, and it’s hard not to imagine buying a place here. 

“Grizz.”

“It’s just...I watched you for months with Harry, so it’s a little rich.” He’s laughing, not being shitty about it, and Allie just...She wants to deny it, but she doesn’t have a leg to stand on, does she? Grizz’s shoulder bumps hers. “Who’re you to talk to me about flirting?”

She raises her brow. “So you admit you’re flirting.”

He laughs, loud enough to echo off the water a little. “Queen of the dodge.”

“I’m not dodging. I fully own up to the fact that I was flirting. I think Harry was, too.” She takes a long sip of her coffee and tries - and fails - to ignore the way Grizz is regarding her. “He kissed me, you know.”

Grizz makes a sound, turns his body a little. “What?”

She nods, then tips her head back so her face is washed in sunlight. “Mhm. My last day. We hugged, and he kissed me.”

“Well...Well, what the fuck happened?” He’s laughing a little, like he doesn’t know how they’re _here_ , with her boyfriend sleeping in the house behind them and Harry doing practically nothing but working in L.A. 

“Nothing.” She shrugs, turns to look at him. He seems confused. “We didn’t talk about it. And then didn’t talk at all. And now things are fine, but. Yeah. Couldn’t have been too good a kiss.”

“Allie.”

“That was a joke,” she tells him, annoyed that he missed it. She picks her coffee cup up from where she’d set it between her thighs. “It’s fine. We’re good as friends.”

Grizz doesn’t say anything for a while. Minutes. Allie sips her coffee and their shoulders are pressed together and she likes this. She’s so glad he came. She’s so glad she met him, and that they’re friends. And, truly, she’s glad if he and Sam _are_ flirting with each other, even if it’s just for fun. When they start talking again, Grizz is asking her what she thinks of Harry’s cooking thing, and they laugh about the fact that Harry’s created a new, private Instagram account that he updates daily with these ridiculously beautiful food photos, and yet his main account is mostly untouched. 

They use Grizz’s long reach to take a really good picture of the two of them with the ocean and the sand and the grass in behind them. He sends it to Harry and says _’Allie says she wishes you were here’_ and then pushes really, really hard to get her to answer him when he asks why she’s blushing. 

She doesn’t fucking know, okay? 

Jason waits until two days after they’re back to break up with her. 

She feels stupid for not seeing it coming. He’d been a little weird, almost possessive around her friends. He says something that feels insulting about wanting to be with a normal girl. She’s sure he doesn’t mean it the way it sounds, but Allie takes a deep breath and waits for him to finish. He says it’s just too hard to deal with the media and her schedule, and that he really likes her a lot and that maybe if she was an accountant, or something, they could make it work. 

This is the reason Becca keeps telling her that the ‘not dating industry people’ rule is a stupid one. She thought Jason understood, but he clearly doesn’t. And it’s not his fault. It’s a wild thing to try to understand and be okay with. 

He leaves her apartment after kissing her goodbye, telling her, “I’m sorry,” and Allie waits til he’s gone before she starts to really register how pissed she is. 

Maybe she was crazy to think they could make it work. It was too good to be true. It was going too well. It also feels like an abrupt and quick breakup considering they’ve been together officially for months. She wonders if she should’ve known something was off since they’ve been together this long and hadn’t even been inching towards an I love you. She sort of thought maybe it had something to do with a little over two of those months included her in Santa Fe. He’s telling her pretty plainly she’s right. 

Becca comes over, hugs her and they cuddle up on Allie’s couch even though she’s scared about what it means that she’s not even that fucking sad about it at all.

… … ...

By the time TIFF rolls around, he and Allie are touching base and at least messaging back and forth once every couple weeks, calling when they can. Usually late at night, her time. She was in L.A. when he was in Texas scouting locations, and she called him, saying she was mad at him for not being there to cook for her. 

He’s pretty fucking proud of her for lining up for that Soderbergh film that’s shooting in Prague after this. He knows she landed it because he talks to people; didn’t let on that he knew about it before she told him, because she was all excited to share it with him and he didn’t want to rain on her parade. 

It sort of complicates everything because they’re scheduling release dates and all that shit. Harry has to be aware of the timeline and what’ll be needed of him, but sorting out schedules for this kind of shit is one of his least favourite things. He just wants people to see the fucking movie and tell him what they think of it. 

Anyway, TIFF is happening and the movie comes out in a few months and so they - the two of them - are scheduled for some interviews and then a photo shoot and a panel discussion. The main reason he’s looking forward to it is because of Allie. Not just because he likes seeing her, likes being around her, and likes that he’s gonna be there with her when all these people realize how great she is. 

He’s barely landed - he’s literally walking through the airport terminal - when her name comes up on his phone. 

“You, me, breakfast bagel sandwiches tomorrow morning. Yes?”

He laughs, loves the sound of her voice, loves that she wants to spend his first day in the city with him. He doesn’t have time in his schedule for this thing, but he sort of wants to say fuck it and blow everything off to be around her. The studio put them up at the same hotel, which he’s known for days and has been trying to convince himself doesn’t matter. 

“I can’t,” he tells her, regret lacing his words. “I think I have 15 minutes in my schedule tomorrow that isn’t spoken for.”

She pauses, and then, “Well, what are you doing tonight?” Harry smiles to himself and nods when his bodyguard points him towards an exit. “Come to my suite?”

He says, “Yeah. Okay,” and tries not to think too long or hard about how easy it is to say yes to her.

Her suite’s full with all the shit her ‘team’ needs during the course of the week. There are racks of clothing and accessories, shoes in boxes and a bunch of makeup and products set out on this one table by the window where he assumes the lighting is good when it’s not dark out. The streets around the hotel are closed for the festival, and Allie mentions she and Becca ordered dinner from that one pizza place they all fell in love with when they were here. 

She’s currently wearing a pair of little grey shorts and a loose white tank top with this lacy bra thing beneath. When he looks away, glances around, his brow furrows and he almost wants to laugh at himself for this realization and not thinking of it until right now. 

“Jason didn’t come with you?”

Allie tucks her hair behind her ear and shakes her head, not looking at him as she pours him some water. 

“We broke up.”

Harry feels his adrenaline surge, or whatever. He feels like an asshole for being happy about it. 

“What? When?”

She turns to him, fake smile in place - and he thinks he’ll never get over how she can be such a good actor, but when she’s hiding something in real life she’s absolutely shit at it. She presses the glass into his palm and looks up at him. 

“A couple weeks ago. After the Hamptons.” She shrugs, and that fake smile leaves her face, replaced by this pretty look he decides he likes a lot. “I’m fine.”

He wants to kiss her right here and now, but he’s not going to do that. 

They sit shoulder to shoulder on the sofa in her suite and compare schedules. They’re doing a whole day of press together, then going to the same premier in the evening. She tells him what she’s excited about, who she wants to meet. She might be joking when she asks if he can make any intros to any of the people she’s mentioned, but he’s definitely not joking at all when he says he can. 

“Who do you wanna meet?” she asks, phone in her hand, knee pulled up under her with her body angled towards his. He can’t help looking down at the skin of her thigh, tilting his head as he lets his eyes travel up until he can look at her mouth. 

“No one,” he says honestly, and Allie looks up, tilts her head like he’s lying. “I’m good to just spend all my time with you.”

She rolls her eyes, but her cheeks flush. It’s fucking pretty. 

It’s late when he leaves, and then he doesn’t see her in person at all the next day. No, he sees her face on the television when he’s got this 24 hour news channel on. She’s in a black satin dress with an open back and she’s interacting with fans along the barriers as flashes go off. Harry’s scheduled to give a talk - like a masterclass kind of thing - to a bunch of young filmmakers, and hates doing this shit all dressed up like someone’s dad. He just pulls on jeans and a white button down, a nice pair of sneakers. His stylist okayed this, so it’s fine. Someone takes his photo and he’s tagged in it on Instagram, then the TIFF account posts it, too, in one of their ‘highlights of the day’ kind of things. They splice the photo of her and the photo of him together so they can promote the panel discussion there are still tickets left for. Harry thinks, not for the first time, that his mom was right. They do look good together. 

When he shows up to their press day, Allie looks really gorgeous in her outfit, a little more casual than some of the others he saw on the rack. He’s casual, too, and they’re sort of coordinated. She’s wearing black pants, a white tee shirt and this burgundy blazer, and he’s got on this black button down with the sleeves rolled up, and his sneakers match her blazer. She looks him up and down and he just grins like he’s similarly pleased by wondering how this happened. 

They do the usual couple hours of interviews back to back, where all these people come in and have their 10 minutes to ask them all the same questions. The ones who are trying to be interesting ask random shit, and Harry smiles when Allie laughs. Someone asks them each to name their top five favourite characters from teen shows, and Allie names her own character from her show. Harry’s joking when he asks, “Who?” and she nearly shoves him off his chair. 

Honestly, the Wired Autocomplete Interview is one of the funniest things he’s ever done. He knew it was happening today, because his publicist vetted it for him and there’s no mention of addiction and shit. Which...Whatever. When you type his name into Google, you definitely get suggestions on his issues and sobriety and all that, but whatever. 

They start with Allie’s first. And it’s like _Where did Allie Pressman Grow up?_ , and _Where does Allie Pressman live? _, and _Where did Allie Pressman go to school?_.__

__“Who is Harry Bingham dating?” Allie reads, then looks straight down the lens and says, “Yes! These are the things we really want to know,” and gives him a pointed look as if she doesn’t fucking know the answer._ _

__Harry stares down the camera and says, “No one. Next question.”_ _

__“Who is Harry Bingham’s - “ She pulls off the little sticker with a flourish, tosses it at him, which makes him roll his eyes. “ - father?”_ _

__Allie gives him a soft look he can tell is all _her_ and not for the camera. _ _

__Harry just smiles fondly and scratches his brow. “My dad was a lawyer in New York. Not in show business at all.”_ _

__He leaves it at that, and Allie moves on to the next question smoothly, which sort of makes his nerves calm a little. And he just really appreciates it. Her._ _

__“Who is Harry Bingham’s best friend?” she asks, then does this dramatic thing where she sets her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand, like she wants him to say it’s her._ _

__He just grins. “All my friends are great.”_ _

__He takes the card from her and tosses it aside, then someone hands him the next one, all about Allie._ _

__“What is Allie Pressman’s guilty pleasure.” Harry meets her eyes and they say at the same time, “Chocolate croissants.”_ _

__“What is your star sign?” he reads - yeah he’s switched it up because it’s fucking weird to say her name so many times._ _

__“What is it?” she asks him, smiling like she’s challenging him, and he just grins back._ _

__“Virgo, right?” She smiles widely and nods once, emphatically, and he shoots the camera a suave look._ _

__She laughs a little, puts her hand on his shoulder, and then fully leans over and rests her forearm there for the rest of the interview._ _

__Afterward, Becca catches his eye, raises her brow, and it makes him fucking uncomfortable, okay? Allie goes off to get her makeup touched up for the last hour or whatever that they’re gonna be in this room doing this shit, and Becca’s right there at his elbow as he’s getting a cup of water._ _

__“You realize the internet’s going to fucking _lose it_ at that, right?”_ _

__“What?” he laughs. She tilts her head, purses her lips. “Is it a bad thing that we have a good rapport?”_ _

__“Mm,” Becca says, obviously trying not to smile too widely. “Rapport. Is that what we’re calling it? It’s not chemistry?”_ _

__Harry rolls his eyes, but she’s right and he knows it. He doesn’t know how much Becca knows, and he doesn’t know how much he wants her to know. He also thinks about Allie in his trailer that time and what she’d said about chemistry, and he wonders if Becca is referring to that, too._ _

__“We’re colleagues.”_ _

__She just says, “Of course,” and then lets out this little chuckle, shakes her head, and opens her phone before walking off._ _

__Honestly, he’s exhausted by the end of the day. There’re just two hours before the premier they’re going to. There’s food waiting for him in his suite, and then he’s gotta get ready. Allie yawns and Becca tells her she’s not allowed to do that, that she’s going to scarf down a salad, get her hair and makeup done, and put on her pretty dress. She mouths ‘save me’ to him as she’s being tugged away._ _

__As he’s eating, he realizes that there were no questions about her sister, either. And that’s definitely a thing that people probably try to search up about her. Out of curiosity, he goes to her Wikipedia page again and yeah, it’s right there in the Personal Life section like it’s anyone fucking business that her sister was murdered._ _

__Next he sees her, her hair’s straightened again, and she’s in this black one shoulder dress with sequins on it. He buttons his double breasted jacket when he gets out of the car, and she’s posing for cameras when she sees him. She gestures for him to come over, and he moves up next to her smoothly, slides his arm around her waist and keeps his other hand in his pocket as the cameras go off. She makes a comment in his ear about how much taller she is with these heels on, and then says she likes his hair like this._ _

__He shouldn’t, but what he does is turn his head so he’s speaking into her ear and no one with a camera will be able to lip read, and says, “You look fucking gorgeous.”_ _

__She keeps her cool, because she’s a professional, and just tips her chin up a little, smiles, and lets her fingers dig into his side a bit where her hand is resting over his jacket._ _

__It’s not until after the movie that he checks his phone and sees how people are reacting to the photos. Maybe Becca was right earlier. Fuck._ _

__But he doesn’t actually even care. They look good together. Look like they like each other. And people are commenting about the placement of his hand on her side, and there’s a video of the moment she waved him over and yeah, the way he fits her all up against him like they’ve done this before is...It’s really something._ _

__When he gets back to the hotel, he sees that Dom has just sent him three crying laughing emojis, which...Well, fuck._ _

__… … …_ _

__If Becca comments one more time about what she is referring to as This Thing Between You And Harry, Allie is going to fire her._ _

__That’s not true. But she’s annoyed by it. This is one of the busiest weeks of her life, and she’s stressing about Prague and how she’s got to go there straight from here and can’t even go home to triple check that she’s packed everything she might need. Becca’s assured her a hundred times that it’s _fine_. _ _

__Anyway, she’s got enough on her mind without her assistant/best friend implying there’s something going on between them._ _

__And like, sorry, but she doesn’t need to look at the pictures, because she remembers what it felt like to be pressed against him, to have his hand right there, fingertips almost brushing the underside of her breast, and his voice in her ear like that. It’s not like she needs Becca or anyone on Twitter or whatever to tell her what it looks like. What it feels like._ _

__She shows up to the photoshoot location - this big, empty industrial space with exposed brick and beans and amazing light - in jeans and a tee shirt, and Harry’s there already, going through racks of suits and whatever. Grizz shows up shortly after her, and she runs to hug him, not caring at all that she’s definitely supposed to be seated to get her nails done. She doesn’t care. Charlize is coming later, too._ _

__They’re smoking out her eyes and her nails are polished a red so dark it’s almost black, and the first thing they put her in is this suit that’s black with satin accents, and a pair of black heels she loves. Becca tells her how hot she looks, and then when she walks over to the set, she sees that Harry and Grizz are both in coloured suits - Harry’s is navy and Grizz’s is dark green. She thinks it’s fucking incredible that she’s wearing all black and the guys are in colour. For some reason, she really, really likes that._ _

__They sit her down on this chair in the centre of the room and position Harry and Grizz behind her. Harry’s got a cup of coffee in a white china mug in his hand, and Grizz is meant to be reading. It’s sort of cliche, but she knows they look amazing, and they’re meant to be all distracted while she’s staring straight at the camera. This shoot is as much about the fashion as it is about the movie and _them_. The photographer asks her to flash the sole of her shoes and she knows why, so she crosses her legs and turns in the chair, leans towards Harry a bit. He looks down at her. She wonders if he’s looking because there’s absolutely not a shirt beneath this jacket and it’s precariously held in place with lingerie tape. Either way, they’re looking at each other when the shudder goes. _ _

__They put her in a black gown with a full skirt, and then this green one Allie knows has to wash her out because they have her change before the photos are even taken. Then it’s a patterned silk wrap dress and the three of them against the brick wall._ _

__She’s tired by the time they get to her last outfit, a men’s white button down tucked into expensive jeans, and a bunch of gold accessories, her hair curling naturally around her face._ _

__The way Harry looks at her when he sees her makes her stomach tighten, and she tries to ignore it, really, but the photographer has them positioned so his hand is on her stomach and his back is to the camera a little. They take photos of them in that position from multiple angles; so in some you can see his face full on, and in some you can see hers. When Grizz comes back onto set, they change everything up, and Harry’s hand is no longer on her, and she sort of misses it._ _

__“How do you do this shit all the time?” Harry asks, shrugging off his shirt. Allie’s never seen him like this before, and so she looks away, looks down at the stylist's hands as she pulls all these gold necklaces off Allie. “This is the worst.”_ _

__“Some of us like to play dress up,” she says, and Harry flashes her a smile and grabs the tee shirt he arrived in._ _

__“Some of us didn’t sign up for that and aren’t used to being in front of the camera.”_ _

__“Yeah, boo hoo,” Grizz says, sort of scoffing. “You act like you’re a gargoyle that should be hidden away. You’re not.”_ _

__Allie laughs at the thought, gives Harry a look. She just says, “You’re...really not,” when their eyes are locked, and Grizz has to clear his throat after a few moments pass and Harry and Allie are just staring at each other._ _

__The fact that she can’t stop thinking about Harry, and how close he was, and how he’d touched her, and last night…_ _

__Well, those are the things that have her knocking on his hotel room door gently when it’s probably too late for her to be roaming around, but she _wants him_ , and she’s tired of pretending otherwise. _ _

__God, every time she’s seen him in the last year has left her wanting more. She likes him. They have fun together. They know each other. She doesn’t want to act like there’s nothing between them. There’s clearly something, and there clearly has been something since they were filming. She can’t stand the way they just ignore that. It’s stupid. They’re adults, and their project - the way they needed to work together on it, anyway - is over, and there’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t act on this._ _

__And there is no way - _no way_ \- she’s the only one feeling this. _ _

__When Harry opens the door, he tilts his head, this truly gorgeous little look on his face like he knows exactly why she’s come. He pulls the door open wider and then shuts it behind her, and before she can say or do anything, he’s reaching for the fabric of her shirt at her stomach to pull her closer, and her hands are by her sides. He’s so fucking close and she wants him to just _do it_ already. _ _

__His free hand moves up to her face, slides over her cheek and into her hair._ _

__They haven’t said a word before he kisses her. Allie’s arms go around him, finally, and he lets go of her shirt so he can push his hand up underneath the fabric. His palm is so warm against her skin she thinks she may moan at the sensation._ _

__After a while, she says, “I want you,” and he just nods his head and starts moving them towards the bedroom._ _

__Never once does it feel like a bad idea._ _

__… … …_ _

__He’s a little desperate to talk to her, but they both have crazy days, and even when he does call her when he’s got a free half hour for lunch, Becca answers and asks him what he needs. He can’t very well tell her he needs to talk to the woman he slept with last night and said goodnight to at 2:30am when she went back to her own room. Allie had just told him not to get up, kissed him, her hands in his hair, and left. He’s not surprised and he understands. He just… He wants more._ _

__Which is sort of a theme for them, right? And he was stupid enough not to say as much last time, but he’s learned his lesson and he’s not going to do the same thing again._ _

__Their panel is in the evening, and Allie shows up looking really beautiful, says hi to him backstage when there are too many people around for him to do anything but echo a greeting back. They spend the next 90 minutes sitting next to one another, Grizz and Charlize on the other side of her, talking about the project and the process and how it all came together and why it’s important. It’s rare for there to be a panel at a festival about a movie that hasn’t even come out yet, and he knows it’s a big deal. It's easy to focus on the work because focusing on the work is what he does best. But every time Allie speaks, he finds himself staring at her as he listens, smiling a bit at how serious she sounds, how important she makes all this sound._ _

__As they’re leaving, as Becca’s fussing with Allie’s bag to get something out of it and isn’t paying attention to them, Harry asks, “I’ll see you later?” and tries not to sound presumptuous._ _

__There’s something in her eyes when she nods. He can’t figure out what it is, which makes him feel sort of off kilter. He doesn’t want to pretend he knows every single thing about her, but he’s pretty good at reading her._ _

__They get into separate cars, and he knows she’s going to some party or another and he’s going to make an appearance at a different one. He sips from a glass of water and talks to different producers who all seem to want to work with him again now that he’s proven he’s not a certified trainwreck. He knows he should be thankful - and he is, really - but there’s something about it that makes him feel gross._ _

__It’s nearly midnight and he’s just getting in when she texts him asking if he’ll be up in a half hour, because she’ll come see him. Even if he’d been planning to go to sleep, he’d change his schedule for her._ _

__She gives him a little smile when he lets her in, and then when he puts his hand on her waist and leans in…_ _

__He thinks the moment the ground moves out from under him is the moment she places her hand on his chest gently and says, “Wait,” in this little voice he’s never heard before._ _

__He lets his hand fall away, but keeps his eyes on her, looks down at her and tries not to hold his breath. But he also doesn’t want to start talking first. No, he wants to wait for her to start. Not just because he wants to know what she has to say, but because he refuses to make an ass of himself by running his mouth. All he wants to say to her is that he really cares about her and last night was what he’s wanted for a while, but it’s not just about sleeping together._ _

__“We should talk,” she says, stepping past him and moving a little further into the room, and then turning to face him again._ _

__“Okay.”_ _

__She sighs like she wants more from him, but he’s gotta protect himself somehow, too. “Last night…” She meets his eyes again, gives him this little smile. It’s pretty, but he doesn’t like it, which is strange to reconcile. “Last night was amazing.” She takes his hand. He lets her, but doesn’t curl his fingers around hers or anything. “I just...I wanted you. I do want you.”_ _

__He grins a little, takes a step closer, curves his hand around her hip. “I’m right here.”_ _

__“I know,” she whispers. “I know, but I’m also leaving for three months, and you’re starting a new project, and what if…” There are tears shining in her eyes, and god, she’s wrong about this. She’s wrong, and she hasn’t even _said it_ yet. “This is all bad timing. We can’t just think we can do this.”_ _

__That’s bullshit._ _

__“Why not?”_ _

__He sounds like a child, but he sort of doesn’t care. It’s not just last night, okay? It’s last night, and yesterday, and this whole time here. There’s also the fact that they’ve been talking more, communicating regularly. They have inside jokes, and they keep talking about how they want to spend more time together. They have L.A. and that hour and a half with fast food that feels pretty important. And they have all this fucking potential she seems okay to ignore, but he isn’t okay with it. He’s not._ _

__“I don’t want to ruin it,” she says, looks up at him from under her lashes. And maybe he gets that, but it also sort of pisses him off, because she’s the one who came to his room last night. She came here. She obviously wasn’t thinking this last night. “My last relationship ended because of my schedule and this whole thing, and I just…”_ _

__Harry clenches his jaw, loosens it again and gives her a look. “I’m not him. I know what we’d be getting ourselves into.”_ _

__She looks downward, puts her hand over his wrist as he touches her, and god, he wants to say he can’t believe this, but he had really no reason to think they’d just _be together_. Who the fuck was he trying to fool? Himself, obviously. But he’s learned some shit from the last time he tried this with someone in the business. And hell, he’s learned _a lot_ of stuff since then. For one thing, how to be a person without medicating, and how to talk about his feelings a little more directly. _ _

__But Allie sort of pushes at his wrist like she wants him to stop holding her, and even though he really, really wants to argue that, he’s absolutely not going to touch her if she doesn’t want him to._ _

__“Allie.”_ _

__“I can’t,” she says, her eyes still on the ground. She takes a step back before she looks up again. “I want you too much.” He tilts his head. She could have him. Maybe not right in front of her, but in any way they could manage. “It wouldn’t be fair to either of us, and…God, Harry. This feels like the kind of thing I really couldn’t handle ending that way.”_ _

__Harry pushes a hand through his hair. He probably shouldn’t be pissed, but he is. Logically he knows that she can absolutely make this decision about them all on her own. But there’s a selfish part of him that thinks it’s fucked up that they just didn’t talk about this at all. She’s clearly made up her mind and this isn’t a conversation or negotiation. There’s no way for him to counter these points. They’re good points - facts, even. He can’t tell her that while he’s filming and she’s filming halfway around the world they’ll be able to get together and see each other, or that they’ll even be able to talk regularly. It’s just fucked that she doesn’t want to even try, or find some compromise on how they could at least try to make something work, or even make this thing they have between them go _somewhere_._ _

__“So what was last night?” he asks, and he knows he sounds mad. No. No, actually, he thinks he just sounds _sad_. _ _

__Watching a tear fall down her cheek when he knows it’s real and not part of her acting really, really fucks him up. He says her name softly and she wipes her face, then dabs at her other eye._ _

__She’s looking right at him when she says, “Maybe I just had to,” and he blinks slowly because...Fuck, he appreciates this callback in theory, but not when she’s using it to make it sound like that’s all it was. “I’m sorry I screwed everything up.”_ _

__That’s definitely not what he’s saying._ _

__“You didn’t,” he tells her, and she takes a deep breath and at least looks like she appreciates that he’s said it. “I just thought maybe we’d…”_ _

__His voice trails and she nods. “Yeah.”_ _

__So maybe she thought it, too. At least last night. Yesterday, maybe, too, if not before then._ _

__He reaches out again, puts his hand on her cheek, and her eyes close. She brings her hand up to his wrist again. She’s the one who steps forward and leans up to kiss him, this gentle press of her lips to his that makes him think she’s just trying to say goodbye, or something._ _

__She says, “I’m sorry,” again before she leaves. He nods because he doesn’t know what else to do._ _

__Harry takes a deep breath after the door’s closed behind her, and then spends the next three weeks wondering why he didn’t do more to try to get her to stay._ _


	4. Chapter 4

Allie was truly foolish to think she could hide this from Becca. They’re four days into their time in Prague before Becca says anything, calls her on her moodiness and the fact that she’s not nearly as excited as she could or should be to be seeing a new city they’ve never been to before. 

“I’m literally wracking my brain trying to figure out what’s going on with you, and the only thing I can think is that something happened with Harry.” 

Allie’s eyes snap shut, and Becca sighs. They’re sitting on a terrace drinking wine and Allie starts filming in two days, and god, maybe she just needs to _talk_ about this and it'll help her get over it. 

(It’s a stupid thought. She’s in way too deep to think it’s a ‘just talk about your feelings and they’ll feel less important’ kind of situation.)

“What, did he do the ol’ kiss and ignore for a second time?”

Allie just meets Becca’s eyes across the table, wishes her friend could have a little more tact in this moment, and hates that she feels like she might cry right now. She should be able to handle this. It was her decision. God, it was her fucking decision.

“No,” she says, and Becca sort of rolls her eyes and sips her wine like...She obviously doesn’t know what’s going on and is assuming, incorrectly, that Harry did something wrong. He didn’t. At all. “We slept together and then I told him we can’t be together.”

Becca nearly chokes.

“ _What_? When?”

Allie just says, “Toronto,” and Becca just stares. Maybe she knows she’s not going to get more details, or maybe she’s annoyed at Allie for stating the very obvious. But it’s her business, and she’s also very aware that they’re in _public_.

“Okay, so…” Becca takes a breath, tilts her head a little like she’s actually going to try to be gentle and sensitive. This is the thing, right? Becca’s...she’s Allie’s best friend, and it’s not for nothing. “So why did you tell him you can’t be together?”

Allie just shakes her head, closes her eyes. Then she takes a sip of her wine. She should be able to articulate this. She should have prepared it all in case he pushed harder. And she thinks maybe she did have it then. Now...Now she just misses him, and thinks she’s being fucking stupid. But then when she considers that even if she had him now she’d only have him part way, and that’s just not good enough. It’s not. She needs more. 

When she explains all this, Becca is patient. She lets Allie talk, lets her finish. 

And then she says, “So who’s left?” and Allie doesn’t know what that means, furrows her brow. Like, after all that, this is Becca’s question. This is her comment? “Well, the whole Jason thing, and you saying maybe he couldn’t get it because he’s not in the industry, and now…” Becca doesn't say Harry’s name, which Allie appreciates. “Now you don’t want to be with someone in the industry. So who’s left?”

It pisses her off, honestly. It’s an unfair assessment and she doesn’t appreciate it. 

“That’s not what I’m saying, I’m…”

Becca laughs, pulls her shoulders back as she sits back in her chair, shaking her head. “It’s exactly what you’re saying. You want someone who can be around you all the time, and unless you want to date me, that’s not going to happen.”

“You aren’t hearing me.”

Becca gets this kind of soft look on her face. “I am. I just think…” She looks skyward, then back to Allie after a moment. “I think you’re scared and it’s making you push things away instead of keeping them close.” Allie just looks at her friend across the table. She wishes she had a cigarette. It’s cliche, but when she’s in Europe she always has fantasies about smoking and eating bread and drinking wine like this at night. “You two have gotten so close. Are you just...You’re gonna stop?”

“It feels more complicated than you’re making it sound,” Allie says, but it sounds like a weak point, or the start of a point she won’t actually be able to back up. Becca’s pointing to the thing Allie _wants_ , and instead of taking what she can get, she’s taking nothing. Reduced to that level of simplicity, it sounds absolutely stupid and self-sacrificing, or something. 

“Okay, let me ask it this way,” Becca says gently, leaning forward again, then pushing her hair off her shoulder. “Do you think you’ll be happier or less happy without having him at all?”

Allie knows the answer. But it can’t be that easy. 

“I made up my mind,” she says, because she’s done talking about this. It’s making her fucking sad. She doesn’t want someone telling her the decision she made is wrong, because she’s been going back and forth about it for days and somehow that’s easier than thinking she did the wrong thing. 

And god, can she even take it back now? She told him what she’d decided. She stood there in front of him and said the words and watched his face fall when he realized they weren’t at the start of something. She doesn’t think she’s going to forget that any time soon. And she doesn’t think she could just call him and say she takes it back. That she still doesn’t know what this looks like or how they could possibly manage it with their schedules being what they are, but that she wants to try. That she sort of thinks they owe it to themselves. 

No, she fucked that all up. And she knew she had to do it, to not make it a conversation. Because if he’d had a chance to argue or convince her, she would’ve given in.

Now, when she’s missing having any small part of him or their relationship or friendship as it was before, she thinks she’s been monumentally fucking stupid and made a huge mistake.

She can’t forget the look on his face. She doesn’t think he’d want to hear from her now, if not only because he’s probably trying to forget about all this and move on. 

It really doesn’t help that any time the media talks about her, they talk about him. The movie has a release date, and the second trailer just came out, and there’re interviews coming out here and there for promo, the movie poster behind them as they talk and sort of lean towards each other. Allie didn’t realize their body language looked the way it does. The magazine sends her publicist some of the images from that shoot. 

She can’t get away from him. Another reminder that maybe she shouldn’t be trying.

(But there’s this part of it, too, right? The ego part of it. The part that’s telling her that at least a little of her reticence is because she doesn’t want to be linked to him forever. She doesn’t want his name to always follow hers when people talk about her. It doesn’t happen all the time - she’s done other stuff, is doing other stuff. But it’s all heightened right now, and this publicity is following her, and it’s all a really big reminder that she needs to be her own person.)

She wakes up and her phone has too many notifications to even go through. The Wired thing came out. Becca walks into Allie’s room in their suite, a little smile on her lips and asks, “Do you wanna watch it?”

She says no, but she watches it on her own, in her trailer between takes. 

They look like a fucking couple. 

The comments beneath are insane, and her name is apparently trending on Twitter in the US with his. She hates this. Because she can absolutely imagine them trending because they’ve gone public and confirmed their relationship. And it’s stupid of her to think this way, because they’ve never even _had_ a relationship. No, they’ve had a one night stand and a pretty fun friendship. When she says this to Becca, she gets looked at like she’s insane.

Noah asks her about it on set and she is cordial with her reply because he’s nice and she likes working with him, and the first thing that comes to mind would be sort of rude. Like, she’s not going to tell him to fuck off. 

Two days later, there’s a photo of Harry and Kelly Aldrich leaving a restaurant in West Hollywood, and Allie hates how fucking mad she gets. She has no right. Becca babies her, which she pretends to hate but secretly appreciates. She keeps insisting she’s fine, but she’s really not. She sort of wants to get drunk on her own, but knows that’s a really terrible idea, so she asks Noah if he still wants to check out this club he mentioned a few days ago, and they go do that. There are grainy paparazzi photos of them stepping out into the night, cheeks red from dancing and a couple drinks, and then Noah’s hand on her back as they get into the car to take them back to the hotel. 

Becca makes a comment that Allie is fighting fire with fire, but she ignores it.

The production moves to Belgium and Allie meets this American tourist who’s really hot and nice and acts like he can’t believe he’s meeting her. He says his ex-girlfriend was in love with her show, asks if she’ll take a picture with him so he can post it on his socials and piss her off. Allie thinks it’s stupid and funny. When he asks her for a drink, she declines. When he asks her to his hotel, she considers it, but then knows it’s a fucking terrible idea and tells him to enjoy the rest of his time in Europe. 

She knows they’re scheduled to do Paris in February for the release of the film there, so when they arrive for filming, that’s sort of all she can think about. About Harry and Paris and how good he’s going to look here. 

Becca tells her just to call him, but she doesn’t even know what she’d say if she did. This is all her doing. They’re apart because she wanted them to be. It’d be silly of her to think just because she’s calling and wants things to change, he’ll be okay with that or want it, too. Maybe she didn’t fuck everything up beyond repair, but if they do end up repairing it, it’s not going to be with an 8 hour time difference and a shitty cell signal. 

They spend weeks in London and then head to Scotland, and Allie gets to show Becca some of her favourite things in Edinburgh. The little bookshop with the yellow walls. The pub where she got drunk on scotch the bartender promised her she’d like and he was right. They do that again. They share bar snacks and Becca asks what the difference is between that trip and this one, other than the obvious, which is that this time it’s for work. Allie rattles off some shit about the weather, and about having more money - which is stupid because it’s not like she was traveling on a budget last time. And then Becca asks her what she was thinking about last time and Allie answers.

And then, without prompting, she says, “This time, I’m mostly thinking about Harry.”

She is _drunk_.

She texts him when she gets back to her room. They’re in this fancy old hotel that she likes and thinks he’d look good in. She doesn’t just text him, she takes a picture of herself in her bed - clothed and with the covers up - and tells him he’d like Edinburgh and she’d like if he were here. 

So, in the morning she feels like a complete fucking idiot and thinks she’s not ever going to drink that much scotch again. 

He just replied _’Cute’_ , and she hates how safe it is. It’s on a short list of acceptable and appropriate reactions, and it’s so unlike him and them and this thing they were doing that it makes her want to cry. She sent him a picture of herself in _bed_ and said she wished he were with her and he wrote back that she’s cute. Or it’s cute. He didn’t even do her the service of specifying.

She’s inclined to apologize, but then she’s so angry that he’s giving her the brush off that she refuses. She tries to consider if it would have been worse if he’d just ignored her. 

Becca flies back to New York before her because there are some things she wants to get in order before Allie lands. When she gets in from JFK, Becca’s clearly been inside her place. There’s a bunch of mail sorted into neat little piles on the counter, including copies of magazines her publicist sent to her. She knows they’ll contain photos from TIFF; red carpets and press she did - they did. There’s a dress hanging on the hook on the back of the door, this Dior thing in a branded garment bag. It’s for the premier. She picked it out in Paris. They fitted her for it and everything. God, they’ll be at Sundance in a little over a month. 

It’s been months. She thought this would be easier than it is. She hates herself for thinking it would be. She hates herself for not being able to force it.

She calls Jason on a whim and they end up sleeping together and she feels stupid for it, so she leaves him in his bed and then blocks his number before she’s even home. 

She doesn’t leave her house for four days and Becca starts getting worried. 

“I’m fine. I’m just...This whole stretch has been a lot. I need a break.”

“You’re going to your parents’ for weeks,” Becca argues, and like, that feels really different, okay? She wants time alone - completely alone - and she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Becca, though, pulls the duvet off her and tells her to get up and shower because, “All this is very depression-y, and I won’t have it.”

She does feel better after a shower. She does feel better after they go for a walk and she gets coffee. She doesn’t feel great when she notices there are paparazzi taking her photo, so she puts her middle finger up and Becca laughs and tells her to _stop_. Her publicist gives her shit for it, but she doesn’t care. She posts one of the photos to her Instagram and captions it _Winter, am I right?_. Grizz posts one of himself in Lake Tahoe with the same caption, and he’s giving the finger to the camera. Then Luke posts one, and Noah posts one, and it becomes this whole freaking thing where a bunch of celebrities are doing it. Harry joins in, posts a photo of himself with messy hair on the deck of his house, bundled up in a sweater with a mug of something steaming in his other hand. 

She should feel something a little better about the fact that he’s playing along. What she does instead is wonder who’s taking the picture. 

She’s being an idiot. 

By the time she gets to her parents’ place, she’s so tired she sleeps for 14 hours and her mom brings her chicken and dumplings in bed and they watch a movie. She falls asleep again and when she gets up and goes downstairs for breakfast the next day, her dad is asking her way too seriously if she’s doing okay. Like she’s fragile or something. Like she might break. 

She refuses to let herself be this bothered by Harry fucking Bingham. She truly feels pathetic for how much she still cares. How much she still thinks it matters what he thinks of her. 

She shouldn’t. She played her cards the wrong way and that’s her fault, and she should be adult enough to deal with the consequences. Becca keeps telling her that she could just _call him_ and clear the air, but that feels like a lot. He hasn’t tried to be in touch with her. 

God, he hasn’t even _tried_ to convince her she’s wrong. Maybe that’s the thing that hurts most.

… … …

After TIFF, everything with Allie gets way overblown, and then he meets Kelly for dinner because she asked and even though there’s this thing in the back of his head telling him it’s a fucking terrible idea, he says yes. Dom calls him the next day to check on him, because Dom knows the effect that relationship had on him in the first place. And that’s not Kelly’s fault, but there’s a direct line between how things happened with her and his steep decline into serious addiction and depression issues. Dom’s right to call him. 

Dom’s also right to tell him he’s being fucking stupid and transparent and that all this shit is a really poor reaction to how things were left with Allie. Dom thinks he was an idiot for not fighting to try and change her mind. Dom thinks she was scared and nervous about them and that Harry could’ve changed the course of things if he hadn’t just stood there and taken what she was saying as indefensible. Dom thinks Harry was way too much of a pushover and didn’t advocate for his feelings in a way that was productive. 

Dom is right.

Upon realizing this, Harry moves pretty quickly into being kind of pissed at Allie, even though he knows that’s not really entirely fair of him. Her feelings are as valid as his are. It’s just that she got to speak hers and he didn’t really. That’s not her fault. He definitely let her control all that. And more dangerous than being pissed at her is being pissed at himself. 

He talks about it in therapy. He talks about it in AA. He talks about it with Dom, and with Grizz, and with his mom, who’s watching all these interviews and videos and asking him why he’s never really told her about Allie and what’s clearly a ‘very important relationship’. He’s sure as fuck not going to tell his mom that yeah it was an important relationship, but then they ruined it with sex and poor communication. 

He still doesn’t think he’d take back that night with her. Yeah, he has to work through that in therapy, too. 

He spends mid-October through mid-December on set in Seattle filming this new thing, his latest screenplay. Someone jokingly asks him if he’s going to try his hand at acting to really become a triple threat, and he just laughs and says absolutely not. The interviewer tells him the camera loves his face, and he just shifts uncomfortably in his seat and says it’s not for him, that he leaves it to the people who have training and experience. Allie absolutely crosses his mind. Which isn’t _new_ , exactly.

He’s going to see her at Sundance for the premier. He’s anxious as fuck. It’s really messing with him that he wants to see her kind of desperately, but also wants to avoid seeing her for as long as possible. Because as much as he’s projecting that he’s fine, and when people ask about this project he still talks about her in really favourable terms - overwhelmingly favourable, in fact - he knows that it’s at least 80% just pretending. 

She hurt him, okay? This whole situation hurt him. And he thinks he could’ve changed that, way back in Toronto the first time. He could’ve been honest with her about that kiss, had an actual conversation with her that wasn’t just him diminishing what he was feeling and what he wanted from her. Fuck, he could’ve done that at any point. He thinks, now, that if he’d said it even when she was with that guy, it might’ve meant something to her. That maybe she had strong enough feelings for him, too, that she would’ve done something about that situation so maybe they could’ve started sooner. Hell, even if they’d just said they _wanted to_ and spent all that time before TIFF talking and getting to know each other even better, things would be different. He knows they would be.

He really doesn’t know how he’s supposed to get over her. More than that, he wonders what it means that he’s not able to do it. His therapist asks him what he _thinks_ it means, and he just stares and doesn’t want to say the answer out loud. 

He can’t stand the way his heart races when he sees her name on his screen. It’s late in the evening because they had a late day on set, and then he’s getting into the car to take him back to his hotel and he sees she’s messaged him. It’s this really, incredibly adorable photo of her in bed, which...Jesus, it’s so easy to imagine they could’ve had this all along, the entire time she’s been away. And what she’s written is just as good as the photo, honestly. He remembers they’d talked about Edinburgh, about how he’d never been there. She remembers that, even when she’s clearly been drinking. And she’d like it if he were there. 

He types out four replies before he settles on the fifth. The first sounds a little desperate. The next two are just eager. The fourth is something about how they should get together when she’s back in the country. That’s the one he comes closest to sending.

He sends, _’Cute’_ because it was his initial reaction, and it’s the one that’s not asking anything of her. He’s not angry and he’s not sad and he just thinks she’s fucking beautiful and likes that she’s thought of him. She doesn’t reply, though, and he wonders how she’s taken it. Admittedly, he wasn’t really starting a conversation. Because this is the first he’s hearing from her, and the last time they spoke she made herself pretty clear. If that’s changed, she’s going to have to be the one to say it. 

He goes to Connecticut and since he’s had this planned, he’s been wondering if Allie would be here, too. She posts this thing on Instagram, her and her parents’ feet in ridiculous fair isle socks in front of a fireplace with the caption _Home sweet home_ , so that answers that. It fucks him up that she’s within driving distance. He wants to see her. He wonders if she’d want to see him. He wonders how they’re going to interact at the premier. 

No, no that’s not true. He knows they have to make it look like nothing’s changed from TIFF. They can’t make it seem like something’s happened between them one way or the other. He doesn’t want to have to pretend. It’ll feel like shit if he has to pretend. 

He should just fucking call her, but he’s really just...He doesn’t have it in him. They could meet for coffee and at least not act like strangers. But she’s the one who wanted to call it off, and he wants to respect her boundaries even if he thinks they’re bullshit. His opinion doesn’t really matter, does it? 

Becca’s the one who calls him. He doesn’t even remember that he has her number saved in his phone, but he must’ve added it during filming. Either way, he’s sitting in front of the fireplace in his mom’s living room reading through emails when her name comes up on his phone, and his first thought is that she must be trying to schedule something, and his second is that something’s wrong. 

“Becca?” 

“Hey,” she says quietly, softly, like…

He doesn’t know what it is. It’s just not helping his anxiety right now. 

“Everything okay?” he asks, and grips the arm of the chair too hard.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s…” She pauses. Harry closes his laptop, not wanting distractions. “We got back from Europe last week. She’s with her parents.”

This is weird. He and Becca have never actually spoken on the phone, and she’s giving him a basic update like it matters, like it affects him. 

“Okay.” 

“She’s...She’s really pretending she’s fine, but she’s kind of a mess.” Harry closes his eyes, says her name. He’s not surprised Becca knows about them; Becca knows everything. But him knowing Allie’s spent the last few months just as messed up as he has isn’t really helping. It sort of pisses him off. “And this is the time of year when Cassandra died, and it’s just a lot.”

She keeps just making these statements, and he doesn’t have much to go on. 

“Yeah, that’s heavy.”

“You should call her,” she says gently, and he sighs.

“Have you told her she should call me?” he asks, and sounds a little more accusatory than he wants to. 

Becca lets out this little laugh. “Only for the last three months,” she tells him, and okay, that just proves his point. 

“So why would I call her when she clearly doesn’t want to talk to me?”

There’s a silence, and then Becca sounds a little pissed when she says, “You two are as bad as each other, you know that?” He doesn’t think she’s done, so he waits. “She’s convinced herself there’s no way you’d want to speak to her, that she messed everything up. She’s terrified of what’s going to happen when you both show up in Utah.”

Harry lets out his breath. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because one of you has to make the first move,” she says, and then adds, delicately, “Even if you’re not going to be together.”

Right. So Allie still hasn’t changed her position on that, is what he’s hearing. Becca wouldn’t have added that if she wasn’t trying to prime him a little for the fact that it’s at least a possibility.

It’s selfish, but he sort of feels like if they’re not going to be together - if he isn’t going to get what he still wants - he shouldn’t have to do all this work. 

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and then his sister’s walking through the living room and he definitely isn’t going to talk about this anymore with her within earshot. She already teases the shit out of him about how this thing with Allie looks in the media and to anyone with eyes. 

“Harry.”

“Look, I…” Yeah, his sister looks over with some interest in this tone he’s using. “I’ll think about it.”

Becca sighs, mutters something about how they’re fucking stupid. “She’s in Connecticut until January 10th.”

God, that’s...That’s over two weeks. Over two weeks of time they could have together if he calls her and she wants to be around him. And that thought alone almost has him dialing her number after he and Becca have genuinely wished each other happy holidays and he’s thanked her for calling because he knows she’s just trying to be helpful. He and Allie haven’t spent that much time together since they filmed this movie. It feels absolutely insane to him that he feels this much about a woman he’s seen for only hours at a time in over a year.

He ends up thinking about it for nearly 24 full hours. He asks Dom for advice, even though he knew what he’d get by doing that. Dom’s been telling him he’s a fucking moron about Allie for ages. So when he asks if he should call her, Dom laughs in his ear until Harry’s seriously considering hanging up. He thinks he called because he knew what Dom would say and wanted to hear it. 

He texts instead of calling. It feels less… It feels less. Less commitment, less desperate. Less like he’s really insistent that they do something about this not talking thing. And it buys him time when she responds; he doesn’t have to think on his feet as much. He’s just more comfortable with it and he’s not going to feel badly about that at all. 

She agrees to breakfast easily, suggests a place that’s an equal drive for each of them, and shows up in a Buick SUV that he’s assuming belongs to her parents. He’s driving the BMW he keeps at his mom’s place. She’s bundled up in a coat and a big plaid scarf and a hat that’s cute with her hair curling prettily over her shoulders. She looks fucking beautiful. He doesn’t know why he even registers it, honestly, because it’s about the least surprising thing he can imagine. 

“Hey,” she says, glancing up at him, and he echoes the word and pulls the door open for her. He’s not sure he’s ready for contact. He’s not sure they should do it at all. And she doesn’t initiate it, either.

They walk in and they’re seated towards the back, which he appreciates because there are fewer people and they’re away from the windows. Allie shrugs off her coat and takes her hat off, smoothes her hands over her hair to tame it. It doesn’t work. She looks a little wild, but he likes it on her. She smiles when she notices him staring. And she’s wearing this grey sweater with her dark jeans, and Harry just...He thinks she’d look good in anything she put on. 

Then she asks the server if Will’s here today, and Harry doesn’t know what that’s about, but orders himself a coffee. When this guy comes out from the back in chef’s whites, his face all lit up when he sees her, Harry just smiles politely and sits there when Allie throws herself into the guy’s arms and they sort of rock back and forth. 

“Harry, this is Will, one of my best friends from high school,” she says, this fucking blinding smile on her face, and it makes Harry grin and stand to shake the guy’s hand. It’s kind of really nice to see her with some of her people. “Will, Harry.”

Harry laughs a little. “That’s it? That’s all the intro I get?” he teases, and she rolls her eyes, and yeah, this is starting to feel a little more normal. 

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Will laughs. Allie lets go of Will’s arm and the guy furrows his brows and tucks one of her wild curls in amongst the rest. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Harry says, and then Will’s telling them the special today is house made biscuits and red eye gravy, which sounds kind of incredible. He heads back to the kitchen and Allie sits back down across from him, tucks her hands under her thighs. 

“Sorry, I…He opened this place a couple years ago and I just really love it,” she says, which is way too much of an explanation. Harry nods instead of telling her to freaking relax. “You look handsome. Your hair’s getting long again.”

He smiles at the compliment, then pushes his hand through his hair. “Yeah. I didn’t have time for a cut before coming here.”

She says, “I like it,” but her eyes are on the menu, and Harry wonders how long they’re going to sit here and pretend everything’s fine. “How was filming?”

“Good.” He hopes his short answer will signal that he’s not exactly interested in an abundance of small talk. “You?”

She shrugs. “Same.” She looks up, smiles and lets out this little laugh. “What am I doing? It was amazing. Getting paid to travel around Europe and play pretend.”

Harry smiles, thanks the server when his coffee is set down in front of him. “Paris soon.”

Yeah, he wants to talk about this - about all this time they’re going to be spending together starting next month. 

She locks eyes with him and says, “Utah first.” 

He nods, and wonders why they’re doing this in public. It feels like a poor choice. They’re not actually going to resolve anything if they can’t talk openly about it. But maybe that’s fine. Maybe they just need to be okay being around each other. 

All he wants to do is kiss her. It’s stupid, but there’s a sizeable part of him that thinks that if he could just pull her close and kiss her and remind her how that feels, how they feel together, maybe that’s the best first step they could take to sorting this shit out. But that’s him making a big assumption, which is that she wants them to end up in the same place he does. Which may not be true. He just thinks of what Becca said, and the way she’d implied that Allie’s been bothered by the state of things...It just doesn’t seem like it’s off the table. Honestly, he doesn’t think Becca would have called at all if Allie didn’t want the same thing he wants. 

She leans forward a bit, her hands going around her mug and...She just looks so fucking pretty. 

She asks, “Are we okay?” and he honestly doesn’t understand how she could even say that out loud. 

She’s looking straight at him when he says, “No, Allie,” on this breath he wishes he could take back. He sounds...He sounds too emotional. “I mean, I’m not.” She fiddles with the handle of her mug, then the string of her tea bag, and avoids his eyes. “I’m not just going to act like nothing happened.”

“I don’t want to do that, either,” she says, shakes her head. “I don’t like how we left things. I don’t like it when we don’t talk.”

He scoffs, which is not the move, but he can’t stop himself. “I just wanna point out that _we_ is an interesting word choice, there.” She tilts her head. “I can’t say this is how I thought it was gonna go, either.”

“Right, so it’s all my fault,” she says quietly, and he doesn’t like that, so he sighs, and wants them to not _do this_. It’s not productive. But it also is kind of her fault. He’s not blameless - he could’ve done things differently - but she’s the one who made it what it is. Mostly. “I was really selfish.”

He’s not going to argue that, either. “Yeah, you sounded pretty sure of it then.” She presses her lips together and looks at him across the table. “Didn’t really feel like I had much of a say.”

“I just thought it would be easier this way. But I just ended up without any piece of you at all, and that felt so much worse.” 

Harry’s lips twist. He likes what she’s saying - likes that it’s been the same for her as it’s been for him - but he’s fucking tired of all the back and forth. It’s fucked up that they can’t seem to sort this out. He doesn’t really doubt that they’ll continue to be fine in front of cameras, and that maybe they’ll start some kind of friendship again, or something. Because he thinks they both want at least that. It’s just stupid that they aren’t capable of sorting out this romantic part of their relationship. Like, why not? Why is it so fucking _hard_? Is that some kind of sign that they shouldn’t do it, or one that they should?

“Why didn’t you just call and tell me that?” he asks, and Allie shakes her head. Their server drops their plates off at the table and Allie flashes the woman a kind smile. Harry’s just watching her. “I mean, I didn’t call you because I didn’t want to push you, or make you feel like I wasn’t listening to what you said.” She goes to speak, but he isn’t done. “You implied pretty heavily that you’d rather have nothing.”

She places her napkin on her lap and says, “I was wrong,” as she looks at him from under her lashes. “And really stupid.”

He takes a breath. “So what are you saying?”

She shrugs her shoulder cutely, then cuts into her poached egg and has this tiny little smile on her face, and he…

He’s pretty sure he knows how he feels about her. Denying it is just self-preservation. 

“I convinced myself you didn’t want to hear it,” she says. Harry takes a bite of his food to buy time. 

Then he asks, “Hear what?” because he really needs her to be super specific, okay? They’re apparently fucking terrible at communicating, and he wants them to stop it. 

“That I’m sorry, and I miss you.” Her voice is so soft, and he notices her nails are polished dark green, and when she looks up at him, she’s smiling like maybe she’s realized already he’s sort of...He’s in for whatever with her. “And I’m still scared and I don’t know how to do this.”

He grins, tries to hide it a little, but her eyes start shining like she can tell and she’s happy, too. “Do what?”

She laughs, shakes her head. “I’d rather have you than not have you.”

Harry thinks about those particular words for a second, then clears his throat quietly and watches Allie’s cheeks turn a little pink. She takes another bite of food and avoids his eyes, which is cute as fuck. 

“Okay,” he says quietly, and her brows go up like she’s hopeful. “But...Look, we can’t just keep fucking up and thinking we’re gonna bounce back.” She’s nodding quickly, and he honestly thinks they’re sharing this attitude of wanting whatever they can get from each other. Maybe that’s unhealthy. Probably. But they’re talking, which makes him feel better about it. “We’re either friends, or we’re not.”

She hesitates, something sort of sad settling in on her face. “Friends,” she whispers, and Harry just needs her to understand that he can’t just jump into a relationship, or whatever, as if the last three months didn’t happen. As if they didn’t sleep together and immediately call it off. As if they could even find a way to talk about it before now. If they’re doing this, they need to do it properly. If friends is all they’ll be, then fine. If it turns into something more, they need to have a foundation for that that doesn’t feel shaky. 

It’s all pretty clear to him. 

“Yeah,” he says quietly, and then Allie nods, pushes her hair back behind her ear before she meets his eyes. He adds, “For now,” because it feels important, because yeah, he wants to be her friend so they aren’t rushing anything, but he wants more. He thinks it’s important that he puts that out there, too. 

“For now,” she echoes, and then bites the edge of her bottom lip and smiles all wide, and Harry takes a deep breath and tilts his head as he looks at her, because she’s really not going to make this easy, is she? Then she looks at his plate and asks, “Can I have a bite?”

Harry’s smiling at her when he slides his plate towards her. She asks him if he wants some of hers. She asks him if he made biscuits from that cookbook. She asks him if he’s still willing to cook for her again. 

Before they leave, they hug by her car and he says, “Allie, I know we’re acting like everything’s fine, but...We really need to keep talking.”

Her hands are still on his waist over his coat as she leans away from him and nods, then meets his eyes. “All I’ve wanted to do for three months was talk to you. So I think I can handle this part.”

Harry smiles too widely, kisses her cheek and opens her car door for her. 

As he’s opening the door to his mom’s house, he sees a text from Allie asking if he wants to hang out again while they’re both here. He doesn’t have to consider what his answer is.

… … …

Allie’s reading this book her dad recommended that she doesn’t like even a little when Harry texts her two days after they’ve had breakfast.

It’s Christmas Eve. Allie’s family has never really had any Christmas Eve traditions, so when she says she’s going to meet a friend, her mom just raises a brow and asks, “Same friend from the other day? That friend?” and Allie rolls her eyes, but confirms it. Her mom smiles like she knows it’s something bigger than Allie’s letting on. Like maybe she knows how this friend is. Allie lets her because...well, because it’s not a lie, really. 

She spends 20 minutes trying on outfits and then ends up having to repack her whole suitcase and fold everything again. She knows what she’d wear if she had her full wardrobe. Now, she settles on black jeans and this oversized burgundy turtleneck she has that’s more comfortable than it is flattering. 

She lets out a whistle when she walks into the foyer of Harry’s family’s home, and he rolls his eyes and offers to take her jacket. 

“My god. You grew up here?” she asks, laughs a little and runs the tips of her fingers over the green boughs set out on the table here, and there’s a large vase filled with red and silver ornaments and a bunch of twinkle lights. The kind of decorating you see from people with an absurd amount of disposable income and somewhat basic taste. “Seriously? This wasn’t like, a place you bought your mom after you made it big?”

He laughs. “No. I grew up here.”

“It’s beautiful,” she says, though she’s only seen the foyer so far. 

He opens his mouth and says, “You’re beautiful,” all quietly, and Allie turns her head to look away from him, and they haven’t even hugged, and she thinks he’s going to go for it, but then there’s a young woman bounding down the stairs in leggings and an Adidas sweater, looking at them. 

“Oh shit,” the woman laughs, then comes down the rest of the way. Allie glances at Harry and he looks nervous, which is maybe a thing she’s never actually seen on him. Not like this. “You’re Allie.” Not knowing what to do other than nod, Allie smiles and also tries to ignore that expression on Harry’s face. “I’m Katherine.”

“Nice to meet you,” Allie says, holds out her hand. They shake, and Allie can’t believe how much Katherine looks like him. They have such similar features, mostly, except Katherine’s accented those already annoyingly perfect lashes with mascara, and her hair’s cut just at her shoulders and curled prettily. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Katherine smiles, looks at Harry, then slides her eyes back over to Allie’s. “I’ve heard _all_ about you, too.” Allie doesn’t know what that means, really, but refuses to look at Harry. “I’m going to Chase’s to watch a movie.”

Harry scoffs, the kind of brotherly response Allie wasn’t expecting and makes her grin a little and look towards her feet. She really wasn’t expecting to meet his family; for some reason she assumed when he invited her here that meant there was no one else around. Katherine heads off down the hall, then Allie hears the jingle of keys and another door close, and Harry’s just standing there in front of her. 

This is weird. 

She presses herself against him and puts her arms around him because she thinks if they just power through, it’ll be fine. Harry takes a deep breath and hugs her back, even moves his hand up onto the back of her head to keep her close. They’re regaining their footing, or whatever they want to call it, but all she wants to do is kiss him. Especially when she pulls away and his hand ends up on her neck, then he moves it down onto her shoulder and he’s just looking down at her. 

She puts both hands on his chest and pushes a little harder than she has to. It makes him laugh. 

Then he gets this absolutely gorgeous grin on his lips and says, “Do you wanna watch a movie, too?”

And something about it makes her narrow her eyes. She has a feeling she knows what he’s asking. It makes her feel all anxious. He’s probably one of the only people in the world who currently has access to their film right now.

“What movie?” He raises one brow and grins, shrugs his shoulder. Allie shakes her head quickly. “No,” she laughs. “No, absolutely not. I hate watching myself.”

“Really?” he asks, then leans his elbow on the railing of the stairs and seems really pleased with himself when he says, “I love watching you.”

Allie takes a step back from him, gives him a look. “I thought we weren’t going to just act like everything’s fine,” she reminds him, and he rolls his eyes at her, which should be more annoying than it actually is. “Don’t be such a flirt.”

Yeah, he can definitely tell that she doesn’t mean that - that she likes it when he flirts with her - and the look on his face confirms that. But he goes with it, says they’ll find something else, then. And then he also laughs when she asks who Chase is and why that was his reaction to his sister mentioning the name.

Allie leans her hip against the counter in the massive kitchen in this house as he gathers snacks and makes them hot chocolate from scratch, because that’s of course a thing he can do without a recipe. Watching him standing there over a saucepan whisking milk and chocolate together, a tea towel draped over his shoulder, is incredibly distracting. 

She really needs to stop thinking about what it was like when he was above her, inside her. When he had his mouth between her thighs and his tongue…

Harry licks the back of a spoon and she turns away and reaches for the peanut M&M’s to distract herself.

The hot chocolate is really, really good. They sit together on the sofa in his bedroom - because his bedroom is just about the size of her entire New York City apartment - their shoulders touching as they try to decide what to watch. She insists it should be a holiday movie, and he insists holiday movies are trash. She tells him she’s about to film an ensemble holiday movie with Diane Lane and Kerry Washington and he rolls his eyes like he’s unimpressed, but still asks to hear more about it. 

They don’t end up watching a movie. They end up with her legs draped over his thighs, his hand on her shin, eating too many snacks and finishing their hot chocolate. She tells him more about Europe and working with Soderbergh, and Harry tells her more about his film. They talk about Sundance, and Harry asks her what she wants for Christmas, what she’s doing for New Years. She asks to see pictures of him as a kid and he refuses. She pulls her phone and shows him one of herself and Cassandra when they’re eight and nine. It’s Allie’s favourite picture of them, except the one from prom. They’re in coordinated dresses in both. Harry zooms in, says something about her little freckles. He caves and shows her one of him when he’s younger at Katherine’s baptism. 

Allie’s mom texts her, asks if she’s going to be home for dinner. For some reason it makes her blush and feel like a teenager as she says she should head out. 

Harry kisses her cheek by the door when she’s got her coat on. His hand lingers on her waist and she looks up at him and wants to kiss him on the mouth, but she shouldn’t do that. She shouldn’t. 

“I’m really tempted to kiss you.”

He smiles, fast and wide, and then looks downward, asks, “Yeah?” She lets out a hum, and then he smoothly slides a grin back onto his lips when he looks up at her again. “You weren’t lying when you said you want me too much, hm?”

Allie rolls her eyes and turns toward the door, but he reaches for her elbow and tugs her back to him. 

His lips press against hers, fingers sliding over her cheek. She’s surprised, because she thought they were taking this slowly, re-establishing their friendship. But she likes it so much, and her hands hold his shirt at his sides, and just as she’s about to part her lips he pulls away. She looks up at him and he’s wearing this sort of beautiful little grin, reaches up and pushes her hair back. 

“Was that okay?” he asks, and he’s being genuine, and she almost wants to laugh, because _was that okay_?

“Yes.” She knows she’s smiling too much. “Are we doing this?”

She thinks they’ve established that they can’t just kiss and have it be just kissing. And she doesn’t want it to be nothing, so she really wants to make sure they’re on the same page. Almost as much as she wants to laugh at how fucking ridiculous it is that they sort of said they’d take it slow, or whatever it is that they agreed to, and now they’re kissing in the foyer of his childhood home literally two days later. 

“I know what I want,” he tells her, his hands still sort of resting on her neck. 

“Me too. But we said we’d be friends.”

He sighs. She knows she’s right. And it’s probably really stupid to rush it. But it’s probably also really stupid to act like they’re rushing it at this point. They’ve known each other for a long time, and they _know_ they can be friends. They need practice with _this_ part of it. Right? 

“What if…” He trails off, takes a deep breath and then lets it out, continues on as though he doesn’t _really_ want to say what he’s about to say. “What if we just don’t sleep together?”

She lets out an incredulous laugh. Not at the suggestion, but at the…

No. What is she even reacting to? 

“You’re serious?” He shrugs his shoulder. “You don’t want to sleep with me?”

She’s teasing him, but it goes over his head. 

“That’s definitely not what I’m saying,” he says lowly. Allie feels stupid for trying to make a joke of it and thinking he wouldn’t come back at her like this. “I just don’t want to mess us up.”

Allie’s tongue slides along her bottom lip. “I think…” She lets out a low laugh, looks up into his eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she chuckles, then pushes away from him. “It’d make me sound thirsty. We can definitely do this. We’re good. We’re…” She reaches for the door handle, but Harry comes closer, too, like he wants to kiss her again before she actually goes. “I think the problem all along was that we wanted things we weren’t sure the other wanted, so.”

“Yeah?” he asks, though it’s pretty obvious and she doesn’t think she has to repeat it. “What do you want, Allie?” he asks, leaning his elbow on the wall next to the door, sort of pinning her there in a way that...yeah, that, and his question...He knows what he’s doing and she’s not going to play into it. 

“I want you to text me tomorrow morning. Something cute and festive.” 

He laughs. “Okay.”

She pushes at his chest again, then leans up to peck his lips as he backs away and she pulls open the door, letting the cold air in. 

“If you’re lucky, I’ll reply.”

He’s still laughing when he says, “Bye, Allie,” in this voice she really sort of loves as she walks through the door. 

(He does text her in the morning. It’s exceedingly cute and more festive than she was expecting. She likes it a lot.)

… … …

He sees her walking through the hotel lobby when she arrives in Utah, and it’s not on purpose. Not that he’s upset about it. It’s just that they didn’t plan it this way and even though it hasn’t been terribly long since he last saw her, he wants her alone for a proper hello. What he does is hug her and say his room number into her ear and then press her against the wall an hour later when she comes up to see him. 

“I’m across the hall,” she says after he’s pulled away, when her eyes are a little glassy and her lips are pink and her fingers are playing with his hair. 

“Convenient,” he says, and goes back in for more. She’s laughing, but she lets him. 

He thinks the no sex thing made sense when they were in Connecticut and could see one another often and regain their footing while they were able to spend so much time together. Now, though, after even this short amount of time apart, all he wants is to be as close to her as possible. And yes, right now with his thigh between hers and her arms around him, they’re pretty fucking close. But he wants more and he can tell by the sound she lets out when his hand trails down her back and over the pocket of her jeans, she wants more too. 

There’s a knock at the door, and he lets out a groan and then Allie ducks under his arm to put space between them, pours herself a glass of water and he pulls the door open. Becca’s there, and she gives him a look like she knows exactly what was just going on in here. Which is annoying, because if that’s the case why the fuck is she interrupting? 

“Hi, Harry,” she says, puts her arms around him loosely for a quick hug, then pushes into the room. She looks at Allie. “Hair and makeup.”

Allie sighs, rolls her eyes and downs her water, then gives Harry a _look_. “Sorry to kiss and run.”

He laughs at the statement, and the fact she’s saying it in front of Becca, though he figures there are really no secrets here, and Becca’s likely going to be organizing a lot of travel and whatever so they can see each other. 

She kisses his cheek on the way by, says, “I’ll see you at the party,” and Harry texts her a few minutes later asking what her outfit looks like. She won’t tell him. 

It doesn’t even matter. She looks fucking beautiful. 

After the party, she comes back to his room with him. They make out and she says she’s tired and then tells him to stop trying to convince her to stay with him when literally all he’s doing is smiling at her and playing with her hair. 

The night of the premier, he and Grizz are already waiting in the SUV to take them to the screening when Allie gets in and sits in the seat next to them. The car pulls away and Harry knows he’s staring, but she just...Her hair is curled perfectly, pinned back halfway, and her makeup is light and shades of pink and terribly pretty, and this dress… This _dress_. She’s texting someone, and Grizz laughs a little - Harry realizes it’s at him because he’s not being very subtle. 

“You look…” Harry reaches over for her hand, and she has all these little delicate gold rings on her fingers. “Jesus.”

She laughs softly. “I’ll assume that’s a compliment,” she says, and he leans over to kiss her, but she stops him and points to this pale pink lipstick she has on. 

Grizz, sitting in the back, just goes, “Um. What the fuck?”

Harry looks at Allie and she looks at him and it seems neither one of them filled Grizz in on the fact that they’re...whatever it is they are right now.

(Harry’s really hoping to get some clarity on that this week, but their schedules are busy, and he’s spent all day yesterday and today - and if he’s being honest the entire past week - a complete nervous wreck about the release. He knows they’re already releasing later than the studio wanted, because of issues with editing and then a competitor’s release on the original release date, which was supposed to be in the fall, and all the pressure of releasing during Sundance, and he just…) 

“We’re…” he starts, and Allie looks at him like she, too, is curious as to how he’s going to explain it because she doesn’t know, either. “Together.”

She smiles prettily and slips her fingers between his. “Yeah,” she whispers, looking at him and not at Grizz.

He helps her out of the car and the cameras are flashing immediately. She plays it cooler than he does, lets go of his hand and heads for the carpet and smiles when she’s supposed to. When he’s next to her again, she slides her hand up his back so it’s on his shoulder, and he puts his on his waist and pulls her a little closer than is necessary, but he also just really doesn’t give a shit. She does to him what he did to her at TIFF, turns her head and part of her body so she can speak into his ear, and says, “If you keep touching me like this, you’ll give us away.”

Harry likes secrets, so he lets go, which he can tell she’s actually a little bothered by, gestures towards her and Grizz, the two stars, and all the cameras are now pointed at the two of them instead. It’s definitely not what she wanted, but that’s fine. He’s fine. It’s good - she and Grizz should have their photos taken together; it makes more sense than her and him. 

But then she’s holding out her arm and he walks back over, stands there with her between him and Grizz, and then Charlize is there, too, and he just…

He tries to take deep breaths. This part’s fine. This part’s just a party. Sitting in a theatre with everyone watching this thing he’s poured two and a half years of his life into, he just…

He takes Allie by the hand in the darkness before they move into the theater, asks, “Wanna get out of here?” and she shakes her head no and then puts her other hand in his, too, holds them between them.

“I’m not going to let you walk away from how big of a deal this is,” she tells him, and he looks downward, swallows. “Everyone is going to love it. You know that.” He doesn’t. “Please let people celebrate you.”

He focuses on his breathing, counts to five and nods, and then she’s smiling at him and leads him into the theatre, lets go of his hand just before anyone would be able to see them like this. They take their seats, and the lights go down. Harry spends half the length of the film thinking about how Allie’d said she hates watching herself, but she’s sitting here next to him doing it anyway. Sitting here next to him because she knows how important this is. Sitting here next to him, taking his hand in the dark when the credits roll and everyone starts clapping for him. For them.

… … …

The reception to the film - and to specifically her performance in the film - is overwhelmingly positive and Allie cries when the reviews start coming out and there’s not a negative comment among them about her. Grizz and Becca sit in her suite and read them with her. Harry’s off in meetings or something, and she wishes they’d waited for him.

This was supposed to be the first thing people saw her in, but that Amazon thing came out first because of the delays on this project, and she almost thinks that’s better. People thought she was good in that, too; thought people should pay attention to whatever she was in next, and then everyone seemed to remember that it was this, and so they’re watching her closely. Her phone is ringing already, her publicist trying to set up interview requests for when she’s in L.A. for the next few weeks. 

She will not be staying at a hotel. She should be focusing on the work and her schedule and not thinking about weeks together with Harry at his place. 

They leave Utah within hours of each other; him on one plane and then her on the next one back. She made an offhand comment about how they should’ve planned to drive, and he’d asked why they couldn’t just cancel their flights and rent a car. But that felt extra even for two people with money. 

When she arrives at his place he’s waiting at the door, and it’s absolutely wild to think she’s never been here before, given how long they’ve known each other at this point. He carries her things to the bedroom - his bedroom - and says something about giving her a tour, but she reaches for his hand and sits down on his bed before he can leave the room. He’s just standing there, looking at her.

“Allie,” he says, almost like a warning. 

And like. No. No, this is stupid. They’re fucking adults, and they’re _good_ , better than ever, and their friends know, and her parents are onto them, and she just sort of refuses to let him act like they need to keep waiting. Or like sex is the thing that screwed them up and it wasn’t their shitty communication and insecurities. They’re working on that part, and the sex is something she wants and sometimes legitimately thinks she needs. 

Like the other night after the premier when they’d gotten back to the hotel in the same car - alone this time because Grizz stayed at the party longer than they did - and Harry’d left her at her door and she’d watched him turn around and go into his room. Something about him kissing her goodnight in the hallway felt almost insulting, though that’s really stupid. She just...It was maybe the best night of her life, and the cherry on top would have been spending the rest of it with him. 

She unbuttons the top button of her shirt, and he blinks slowly and watches. “Do you not want to, or something?”

He laughs, this low sound that’s definitely meant to let her know how stupid that is. Good. She thinks he’s being stupid, too. 

She undoes the next button, and then the next, and Harry has this little smile on his face. 

“Why don’t you just sit down, if this is going to be some kind of show?” she asks, stands, moves closer to him and then backs away when he tries to reach for her. 

“Allie,” he repeats, voice lower, wanting. She pushes gently at his stomach, and he sits down, and then she gets the rest of her buttons undone as he leans back on his hands and watches, pleased little grin on his face as if he’s done anything here and she hasn’t done all the work. 

“Should I take it off?” she asks, and her knee brushes his. She sees him swallow, then he leans forward and slides his hands up her thighs onto her hips over her jeans. He nods, and then tugs her closer, and before she can even get her shirt off her shoulders, he’s pressing kisses to her stomach along the top of her jeans. She puts her hands on his face, tips his head back so he’s looking at her. “I want you to say it.”

“Say what?” he asks, laughing, and then his hands are on her skin. “That I want you undressed? I want you undressed.”

She furrows her brow. “Why aren’t you helping?”

Harry smirks at her, wets his bottom lip. Yeah, okay. “Because you look so good doing it on your own.”

_Oh_.

She reaches for the two sides of her shirt, pulls it down and lets it fall to the floor. Harry looks up at her from his spot, but then his eyes drop to her chest and he has this ridiculously sexy look on his face when her fingers move to the button of her jeans.

“Will you let me undress you, too?” she asks, and Harry just blinks slowly, leans back again. It’s inviting. She won’t lie and say it’s not. 

“I’ll let you do whatever the fuck you want.”

Yeah, he knows what he’s doing, and he knows what she’s doing, and when she pushes her jeans down off her hips and he sees that her underwear match her bra, he takes a breath like he likes what he sees. 

Allie sits herself down on his thighs, her knees on either side of him, and reaches for the buttons of his shirt, too. His hands are on her back, and he has the nerve to say, “You’re not done,” and while it’s _hot as fuck_ and almost enough to have her telling him to give her some instructions, it goes against what he said. 

She leans in to kiss him gently, too quickly for both of them, she thinks. “You said I can do what I want. Let me.”

When she gets his shirt off him, she pushes hard at his chest so he’ll lie back, and reaches for the button on his pants. 

He says her name for a third time. Allie likes that.

Later, she wears her comfiest sweats and a hoodie he tosses her when she realizes she forgot hers in Utah and Becca has it with her at the hotel she’s staying at, she thinks he sort of can’t keep his hands off her now that they’ve made things physical again. She says that it’s probably a good thing they waited til after Sundance, but god, the rest of the world is gonna get a show, aren’t they? 

“Paris,” she breathes, a little dreamy, and Harry laughs and shakes his head. He’s working on pasta dough, says he’s making her his signature ravioli he’s only ever made for Dom and Mia, and his own family. 

“Paris is overrated.”

Allie rolls her eyes, watches his forearms as he does whatever he’s doing. She’s so lucky he can cook, honestly. 

“You’ve never been to Paris with me,” she says, and he grins, abandons the dough and fits himself between her thighs as she sits on the counter. He doesn’t touch her with his messy hands, but he angles his face up towards hers, wanting a kiss. She gives him what he wants. She likes doing that. God, she can’t believe this is still just their first day here like this and she’s already this fucking happy. 

“You’re right,” he tells her. “It’ll definitely be better with you there. Are we really letting the studio bother with two rooms? Pretty sure we’ll spend every possible moment in my bed.”

“Why your bed?” she asks, though she feels like she should argue the overarching point, not just this detail of it. It's just...It’s probably true. 

“Won’t you be sharing with Becca?”

She narrows her eyes, looks at him like he’s being goofy. “We don’t share a bed, Harry. Hate to break it to you.”

His brow goes up and he looks off a little like he’s thinking about it. She figures he’s joking, but tells him to stop, anyway, uses her fingertips to push at his cheek, and he goes back to work. 

Allie wonders if it would be bad to eat fresh pasta every single day they’re here. Harry says something that sounds pretty serious about them having lots of time on future visits for her to have it again. 

In the morning, she makes toast and scrambled eggs because she’s up before him and this is one of the only things she can’t fuck up. When he finds her, she’s looking in his fridge for jams and condiments, and he slips his arms around her from behind and says a rough, sleepy good morning in her ear. 

Something deep and serious blooms in her chest and she just leans her head back against his shoulder and says yes when he asks if she wants some coffee.

The night before they leave for Paris, they sit cuddled up under a blanket and with his outdoor heater on, on the back deck of his house with the city lights twinkling and some soft music playing. Harry’s lips brush her temple and she thinks it’s way too early to consider living in L.A., but that’s where her mind goes anyway and she can’t stop it. 

… … …

He wakes up early because he can never do international travel well, and jet lag always hits almost immediately. He goes to the nearest patisserie and gets three pain au chocolat (one for him and two for her) and two espressos, and when he lets himself back into the room, she’s awake and sitting up in bed, her hair still holding some of its curl from yesterday, the crisp, white sheet pulled up over her chest. 

She looks mad. Sleepy, but mad. 

“Where did you go?” she asks, and then he produces the bag and tray of drinks and she smiles a little before faking her little scowl. “You didn’t leave a note.”

“How am I supposed to surprise you with pastries if I have to leave a note?”

He holds out one of the pain au chocolat for her and she literally gasps. She takes it from him, then hooks her arm over his shoulder, leans up on her knees. 

“You do understand me.”

“Mm.” He looks down at her lips, wants to go in for a kiss, but she turns her head as he leans in, takes a bite of her pastry and lets out this sound that’s… Look, he’s heard that sound before. “Good?”

She nods, and he pulls himself away, takes a sip of espresso. Allie’s phone chimes and she laughs when she reads the message. It’s from Becca, asking _’Are you naked with Harry or can I come in?’_

He chuckles, shakes his head, reaches for his own phone and then the door to the suite is opening and he looks over to see Becca walking in with her iPad in her hand, phone in the other, and the diary she usually carries around, too. 

“Who gave you a key?” he asks, and Becca gives him a withering look. 

“Who do you think?”

She brushes past him and into the bedroom, and when he glances back in Allie’s covered with the sheet again with her pastry in one hand and her espresso in the other. 

Harry’s dated actors before; he’s not surprised, not really, by all the shit that comes along with dating Allie. The schedule and the appearances and the dresses and the makeup and all that. He likes her assistant better than he liked Kelly’s. And he likes Allie better than he liked Kelly, too. The premier is in two days, but they have press to do before then. Allie’s promoting the Connie Britton movie, too (though he doesn’t call it that when they’re talking about it because he thinks it’d be insulting) so she’s got a whole day today of taking calls and doing video interviews, or whatever. He knows that because he knows her schedule. Because they talk, obviously, but also because Becca told them that if they had a hope in hell of making this work, they needed to download this app and sync their calendars but not get each others’ notifications and all that shit. 

Becca’s smart. He’s sort of wondering if she’d be willing to be his assistant, too. The only reason he hasn’t asked is that he thinks it’d be impossible to do both. 

Anyway, Allie’s day is full, and his is mostly clear, and Grizz hasn’t arrived yet. Harry doesn’t care for Paris, but he doesn’t mind the shopping here. He’s got appointments at some ateliers. He needs a couple tuxes for awards season, and figures he’ll do that while he’s here. Allie’s doing something similar tomorrow. 

The three of them go for dinner in the evening, this little bistro with a cozy interior. Becca orders them a half litre of wine and Harry’s secure enough in his sobriety that this is _fine_. Actually, he thinks Allie looks sort of incredible with her glass in her hand, the dim lighting of this place, and her hair the way it is. He pulls out his phone to take a photo as she talks to Becca. Becca calls him gross, but he doesn’t care. He takes one of the two of them, too, and she seems to be okay with it after that. 

Allie asks him to share the picture with her, but he wants it just for him. He takes another when they’re walking back to the hotel, airdrops it to her and she posts it on Instagram immediately, tags him and Becca and then it blows up like they knew it would. 

The next day, after both their appointments, she tells him she’s never seen the tower up close and wants to go. She’s wearing this outfit he can tell she thinks is particularly Parisienne, and he’s not even going to pretend she doesn’t look fucking adorable with her little beret on. They’re walking down this street and she’s ahead of him and she looks back, smiles and he swears he can see all her emotions right there in her eyes when she grabs his hand. As they approach the tower she lets go, and Harry snaps a picture of her then, too. 

They get Becca to take one later in the day, the two of them leaning on the barrier along the Seine, Allie’s body turned towards his and his arm sort of lazily around her. Right after the photo, she leans over and kisses him like she doesn’t give a single fuck who might see and say something. 

She posts both pictures, captions them something about living out their wildest dreams, and Harry locks the door to their suite when they get back, even puts the bar across so Becca can’t waltz in, and Allie asks him what’s gotten into him as he undresses her slowly and takes his time kissing his way down her body. As if this is out of the ordinary or he needs a particular reason to want to do it. 

For the premiere, she wears this soft pink, almost champagne coloured dress that skims the floor and has these taffeta bits on the shoulders. Her makeup’s left light and her hair is natural and curling just so, and when Harry sees her for the first time, he thinks he might forget how to form words. It’s honestly his favourite look on her yet - well, favourite of the things she’s worn for appearances and not like, in his house or in bed - and he thinks she fucking knows exactly how good she looks, what she’s doing to him. 

She asks him to take a photo. He honestly can’t help himself and was going to do it anyway. She turns her head, looks past her shoulder, and the lighting is perfect. He takes a really damn good photo and sends it to her. 

Without telling her, he posts it to his Instagram before she can get it up on hers, captions it _What a face_ even though you can really only see her from the nose up with her dress in the way like that. It doesn’t matter. She’s fucking perfect. 

As is becoming their tradition, he turns his head to say those very words into her ear. This time, someone notices the parallels to Sundance and to TIFF, writes a whole article about it and starts connecting dots. Harry doesn’t care - he’s used to people speculating about his dating life. Allie doesn’t seem to mind, either. When he asks her about it, she just shrugs her shoulder and says, “They’re not saying anything that isn’t true.”

When he wakes up their last full day in Paris, she’s wearing one of his shirts with her own jeans, and she’s walking back into the room with two cups of coffee and a bag he’s assuming contains some pastry or another. She looks so fucking sexy he can’t help that he leans up on his elbow, slides his hand up onto the back of her neck and pulls her closer when she leans down to say good morning. 

“I brought coffee,” she says in a quiet voice. 

You know, he always thought that shit about the way people say I love you without actually saying it was just a poor justification for someone not saying it as much as they could, but now… Honestly, looking at her, and hearing how she said that, and knowing she got up and left the hotel to get it…

“Saying I love you in Paris would be the kind of cliche we’d both hate, wouldn’t it?” he asks, and Allie blinks at him, trying not to smile, and nods almost imperceptibly. Harry rubs his thumb against her hairline like she likes. “Yeah. You’re right.”

Her hand rests against his chest and she smiles at him. “‘Cause then I’d have to say it back, and it’d be a whole thing.” He nods, looks at her lips. She parts them just slightly, like she might actually go ahead and say the words. But she doesn’t. She just leans forward, kisses him softly. “And what’s the rush, you know?”

Yeah, the implication that they’re going to be together a while is just the kind of reminder he likes. He wants it, too. She knows that. They’ve talked about it at length. He’s sure their schedules will get more and more insane as this whole whirlwind stops and others start up. But he’s really glad they’ve had all this time together. He thinks it only means good things for them. 

That holiday movie is filming in L.A. She’s going to be around for a couple months, and all her accommodation was set up prior to them starting this. As they’re packing to leave - they’re travelling on the same flight this time, both in first class, but she’s sitting next to Becca and he’s on his own - he stops, looks at her across the bed as she’s folding a sweater. 

“What?” she asks when she notices him staring. 

“Stay with me,” he tells her, and he doesn’t have to specify what he’s talking about. Allie smiles, looks at him a second longer, then nods. “Yeah?”

“For the food.”

He laughs softly. “Naturally.” Allie rounds the bed, comes to stand in front of him, and puts her hands right up under his shirt, which is a thing she does exclusively when she wants him out of it. “We don’t have time.”

She gets this little look on her face, reaches for his wrist and looks at his watch, then back at his face. “I believe in us.”

Harry laughs. He’s still laughing when she kisses him. He’s laughing right up to the moment she leans back to take her shirt off.

… … …

Allie manages to tell her parents before the news breaks, but only by a couple weeks. It’s almost ridiculous, really. The timing is wild. When she says this to Becca, it’s when they’re sitting in the living room of Harry’s house while he’s off at meetings, and Becca laughs and looks at her like she’s crazy. 

“Yeah, it’s not like you two have been subtle. And let’s not pretend people haven’t been speculating all along. Now there’re just photos of you two at Whole Foods together.” Allie opens her mouth to say something, but Becca just raises her brow. “That’s like the celebrity version of changing your relationship status on Facebook.”

Allie just laughs. That’s kind of true. 

She was due to go back to New York last week, since her movie’s wrapped. But she didn’t really have a reason to go, and she does have a reason to stay. The day she decided to cancel her flight was the day she called her parents to tell them. Her mom's words were, “Do you think we haven’t noticed how nice this place is that you’re staying?” and her dad in the background was yelling, “Or the way you two make eyes at each other?”

Harry nearly spit out his drink laughing. It’s about the least dignified thing she’s ever seen him do.

They’re not living together officially, but she’s just not exactly leaving his house or sleeping anywhere else, and her empty suitcase is in a closet and her things are in his bedroom. 

And one night when it’s late he says, “Just move out here. Like, what’re you waiting for?”

And she says, “A good enough offer.”

And he rolls her beneath him, presses against her just the way she likes, and says, “Tell me how I can sweeten the deal.”

Allie likes his house, and she can understand why he likes it, too, but she’d much prefer a place like Dom and Mia’s. Theirs is in this cute neighbourhood and it has so much more character, and a pool, and a guest house. She definitely doesn’t think they should _buy real estate_ together, or anything, but she’s thinking back to when he said something about moving and she wonders if that’s a thing they could do together eventually. Buy a place for them, that they both love, where she won’t feel as much like a guest when he’s not around. 

She thinks he and Becca are in cahoots. She’s seen them whispering, heard them talking about where Becca will live out here. As if it’s a ‘when’ not ‘if’ situation. Which is maybe accurate, but Allie still thinks is annoying. She’s known since they first started working together that Becca would move out here in a heartbeat. 

Allie isn’t willing to give up her place in New York. Becca gives up hers, though, gets this cute little apartment in La Brea that Allie thinks suits her perfectly, and Harry, under his breath, makes a comment about how now that she’s out here, he could triple her salary if she wanted to work for him. Allie is quite offended, but Becca seriously thinks she could do both. Allie can’t tell Becca what to do - it’s entirely the other way around - but says if they want to try to make it work, they can. 

Harry makes a joke about them getting a house with a guest place like Dom and Mia’s so Becca can live on the property. Allie thinks it’s honestly a great idea. She still doesn’t say anything about buying property, but she looks up listings one night when he’s sleeping next to her and she can’t turn her brain off. 

After he finishes editing his latest movie, they spend three weeks talking about where to take an honest to god vacation, because she hasn’t had a non-work-related trip since Edinburgh after the show wrapped, and when she asks him when he last took a vacation he just gets a guilty look on his face. So she thinks it’s safe to assume he hasn’t had one in an incredibly long time if he can’t even remember when it was. 

He wants to go to Italy, but she’s bored of Europe - a phrase he makes fun of her for to no end with how snotty and privileged it is. And she lets him carry on, because he’s right. She suggests Hawaii, but he says he used to go every winter with his family. They talk about Thailand but it doesn’t really go very far. She mentions Argentina because Luke was just there to film something and said it’s amazing. 

As they’re bickering because Allie thinks he’s just being ornery on purpose and he thinks she should just pick somewhere if she’s so insistent about it, Becca heaves a sigh and then slides her iPad across the kitchen island towards them. She’s just purchased them tickets to Costa Rica - a place that hasn’t even come up - and says, “You’re driving me up the wall insane about this. Shut up and go fucking relax.”

Spending two entire weeks with him in a beautiful rental home on a private beach is really kind of perfect. It’s a little wild to her that she’s better at relaxing than he is. She confiscates his phone on the second day when he won’t stop refreshing his email. After that, she distracts him sufficiently with her plethora of bikini choices, lets him choose what she wears sometimes, and there’s always the promise he’ll get to take them off her later. The day he finds his phone and she catches him red handed replying to some email or another, she swats his hand away after dinner when he tries to tug on the strings at the back of her neck. He’s properly put out by it, but he doesn’t bother with his phone the next day.

She considers it a great success when he falls asleep in the hammock in the shade, his book on his stomach and the humidity making his hair curl just so over his forehead. She takes a photo on this fancy film camera he brought with them, then takes another on her phone. She considers posting it, but decides better of it. They still haven’t confirmed their relationship outright, though everyone kind of knows anyway.

And then they’re photographed at LAX when they get back. Harry reaches back for her hand when there’s a crowd of people with cameras walking alongside them. She tries not to react, but can’t help smiling just a little. There’s some stupid caption on TMZ about them being all tanned from their tropical vacation. 

“We should just put out a statement,” he says in passing as he makes dinner. Allie’s tapping out a text to Becca to thank her for making sure the house was stocked with groceries for their return. 

“Yeah?” she asks, distracted, and he moves the onions and garlic around in the pan and shrugs. “You think we can handle the pressure?”

He has on this grin that lets her know he’s about to say something cute or funny. “I think people knowing doesn’t change a thing for me.” He glances over just in time to see her smile, step closer to him. She presses her lips to his cheek, which he loves but won’t ever just admit. “You?”

She just says, “No,” but it comes out a little too quietly. Harry looks at her a second too long, then winks and turns his attention back to the saucepan on the stove.

… … …

Allie wears this deep purple gown to the Oscars. They get ready together. They take a car together, do the carpet, get photos taken, sit together.

She doesn’t win her category - but loses to Meryl, so, you know - and she’s holding his hand so tightly when his name’s announced by Leonardo fucking DiCaprio, Harry thinks she mighthonestly leave marks. He kisses her, puts his hand on her face and rests his forehead against hers, and at the end of his speech, after he’s thanked the producers and the crew and Grizz and Charlize, and Dom, he just looks at her sitting there with tears on her cheeks and her hands clasped and up against her face. He smiles - can’t help but - and says, “Allie,” and puts his hand over his heart, his other hand gripping the award.

He ends up with two - one for the screenplay and one for directing - and then they take Best Picture, which is such a shock he sits in his seat a moment too long just processing after it’s announced. He doesn’t know how it happened. No one thought they’d take it.

Allie flies out in four days to Denver to film on location for three months. They do the Vanity Fair party because it’s what you do, and they have fun, and he wants to laugh at her for how excited she is to meet and hang out with Chrissy Tiegen. He talks to all the people who want to talk to him, and when he’s talking about his latest project with the producer of the film he’s carrying this award for, Allie slides up next to him and puts her arm around his waist, and he puts his around her shoulders easily. 

“Ready?” he asks once they’ve excused themselves from the conversation. 

The next day, they see a picture some photographer snapped of them, her all against his side, her hand resting on his stomach, one of his Oscars in his free hand as she tips her head back and he leans in to kiss her. 

Allie’s scrolling through Instagram and Twitter in bed in their new place, reading him some of the funnier comments and captions. Harry’s sipping coffee and looking over her shoulder.

“They’re gonna lose their minds when we start filming again,” he comments, and she gives him this kind of perfect smile and lifts her brow quickly. Yeah, she’s got this project she’s starting, but his next one is the next one they’re doing together, this HBO miniseries he’s directing and she’s got the lead role in.

She grabs her phone, sets her hand on his wrist as he holds his coffee cup. Her gold polished nails looking pretty against his skin and the white porcelain. She takes a photo and he watches her open Instagram, add it to her story with _The morning after ❤️_ and then toss her phone down the bed. 

She says, “Pay attention to me,” and cuts him off with her lips when he makes a remark about her being a needy actor.


End file.
